First Advisor

DeLys Ostlund

Term of Graduation

Spring 2001

Date of Publication

5-23-2001

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Spanish

Department

Foreign Languages and Literatures

Language

English

Subjects

Sephardic authors, Ladino romance, Spanish ballads

Physical Description

1 online resource (ii, 88 pages)

Abstract

The present study examines the local influences on the ballads on the Eastern Sephardic Jews. With very few exceptions, these influences are from the Turkish language and from Modern Greek folk balladry. Therefore, I have divided the results of my findings into these two categories.

In the section concerning Sephardic ballads influenced by Greek folk poetry, I synthesize and expand upon the findings of Samuel Armistead and Joseph Silverman, who have combed through more than one hundred different Greek ballad collections to determine how these have influenced the Sephardic romancero. I combine with their results the Peninsular and Turkish aspects of the Sephardic ballads they find to be based on Modern Greek ballads. This section will also cover the extremely rare existence of Greek vocabulary in Eastern Sephardic balladry.

With a few salient exceptions, little has been said about the influence of the Turkish lexicon upon the Sephardic romance. I show that many Eastern Sephardic ballads contain Turkish words that have first become part of the Judeo-Spanish dialect and have subsequently entered into these ballads. But there are other ballads that show remarkably specific uses of Turkish. For example, I show that the most frequent use of Turkish vocabulary is in the description of the dress and physical beauty of the female protagonists.

By way of conclusion, this study examines why, out of all the diverse linguistic and literary influences present in the Balkans, Greek folk poetry and Turkish vocabulary have such an exclusive capacity to influence the Eastern Sephardic romancero.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44931

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