Sephardic Jews who voluntarily or forcibly converted to Catholicism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to avoid persecution or expulsion were known as conversos or New Christians. Some tried to live the double life of a Crypto-Jew, outwardly embracing Christianity while secretly maintaining Jewish practices. Others were in a state that was neither Jewish nor Christian, and, as painful and humiliating as it was, these Marranos (a term for conversos that became abusive), actually created a new kind of modern personality. By tracing the usage of this disparaging term, Masks in the Mirror also explores the nature of the historical circumstances as it becomes evident that anyone living under these circumstances – constantly threatened and persecuted by the Inquisition and suspected of being heretics and untrustworthy by their Christian colleagues and neighbors – could be driven to a state of madness. Focusing on families and childrearing, this book attempts to grasp the structures of feeling that created such madness, which while debilitating could often be creative and exciting, especially among poets, playwrights, and novelists. It looks at the play of masks, the secrecy and the illusion, that Marranos experienced daily, which some attempted to exorcise in their writings, and it explores the possibility of applying the concept of Marranism generically.

Masks in the Mirror: Marranism in Jewish Experience

Literature & Fiction

Simms, Norman

History & Criticism

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

This is a book about the way different literary traditions and different kinds of cultural discourse interplay and intersect. The author argues that Western civilization has imposed its notions of the literary upon many non-Western cultures. Non-Western cultures that possess oral, rather than written, literary traditions are often looked down upon by Westerners. Points of Contact introduces the reader to the rich oral cultures of the native people of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the South Pacific. Contents: Three Worlds; Goblins on the Shore; Huenum's Trap; On the Margins of Textuality; Civilization as History and Proportion; and Points of Contact.

Points of Contact: A Study of the Interplay and Intersection of Traditional

Univ Publ Assn

My Cow Comes to Haunt Me: European Explorers, Travellers, and Novelists Constructing Textual Selves

This book addresses the history of mentalities, psychohistory, and the history of colonialist discourses. For those interested in the development of Third World and of post-colonialist cultures, the book offers a new set of insights and methodologies."My cow comes to haunt me," said the bush-widow in Tasmania in the early 1830s, and the men out on the fringes of empire who listened, journalist, historian and traveller, smugly laughed at her ignorance and superstition. The colonial encounter between European and non-European takes place on and in the fringes of two or more cultures. They encounter words dialectically, playing off different forms of power and with ramifications in several directions. My Cow Comes to Haunt Me focuses on the problem of colonial discourses and especially the "topos" of the first encounter within the algebra of history of mentalities, and does so with an optic that includes the European intrusion into the Pacific islands.

This book addresses the history of mentalities, psychohistory, and the history of colonialist discourses. For those interested in the development of Third World and of post-colonialist cultures, the book offers a new set of insights and methodologies. 'My cow comes to haunt me,' said the bush-widow in Tasmania in the early 1830s, and the men out on the fringes of empire who listened, journalist, historian and traveller, smugly laughed at her ignorance and superstition. The colonial encounter between European and non-European takes place on and in the fringes of two or more cultures. They encounter words dialectically, playing off different forms of power and with ramifications in several directions. My Cow Comes to Haunt Me focuses on the problem of colonial discourses and especially the 'topos' of the first encounter within the algebra of history of mentalities, and does so with an optic that includes the European intrusion into the Pacific islands.

University Publishing Association

From the very moment Alfred Dreyfus was placed under arrest for treason and espionage, his entire world was turned upside down, and for the next five years he lived in what he called a phantasmagoria. To keep himself sane, Dreyfus wrote letters to and received letters from his wife Lucie and exercised his intellect through reading the few books and magazines his censors allowed him, writing essays on these and other texts he had read in the past, and working out problems in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He practiced his English and created strange drawings his prison wardens called architectural or kabbalistic signs. In this volume, Norman Simms explores how Dreyfus kept himself from exploding into madness by reading his essays carefully, placing them in the context of his century, and extrapolating from them the hidden recesses of the Jewish Alsatian background he shared with the Dreyfus family and Lucie Hadamard.

In the Context of His Times: Alfred Dreyfus as Lover, Intellectual, Poet, and Jew (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Academic Studies Press

Alfred Dreyfus: Man, Milieu, Mentality and Midrash (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History)

This groundbreaking book focuses on Alfred Dreyfus the man, with emphasis placed on his own writings, including his recently published prison workbooks and his letters to his wife Lucie. Through close reading of these documents, a much more sensitive, intellectual, and Jewish man is revealed than was previously suspected. He and Lucie, through their family connections and mutual loyalty, were interested in and supported the artistic, scientific, philosophical and historical movements that formed their Parisian milieu. But as an Alsatian Jew, Alfred was also critical of many aspects of technological and ideological developments, making his mentality one of skepticism as well as idealism. Norman Simms addresses the way Dreyfus perceived the world, challenged many of its assumptions and contextualized it in the style of a rabbinical midrash, a process that created what Alfred called a “phantasmagoria” of the Affair that bears his name, and also interprets the man, his milieu and his mentality in the style of a midrash, a creative, transformative reading.

Academic Studies Pr

Two groups were persecuted over the course of four hundred years in what is now the southwestern United States, each dissimulating and disguising who they truly were. Both now declare their true identities, yet raise hostility. The Penitentes are a lay Catholic brotherhood that practices bloody rites of self-flagellation and crucifixion, but claim this is a misrepresentation and that they are a community and a charitable organization. Marranos, an ambiguous and complicated population of Sephardic descendants, claim to be anousim. Both peoples have a complex, shared history. This book disentangles the web, redefines the terms, and creates new contexts in which these groups are viewed with respect and sympathy without idealizing or slandering them. Simms uses rabbinics, literary analyses, psychohistory, and cultural anthropology to consolidate a history of mentalities.

Marranos on the Moradas: Secret Jews and Penitentes in the Southwestern United States from 1590 to 1890 (Judaism and Jewish Life)

History

Americas

This groundbreaking book focuses on Alfred Dreyfus the man, with emphasis placed on his own writings, including his recently published prison workbooks and his letters to his wife Lucie. Through close reading of these documents, a much more sensitive, intellectual, and Jewish man is revealed than was previously suspected. He and Lucie, through their family connections and mutual loyalty, were interested in and supported the artistic, scientific, philosophical and historical movements that formed their Parisian milieu. But as an Alsatian Jew, Alfred was also critical of many aspects of technological and ideological developments, making his mentality one of skepticism as well as idealism. Norman Simms addresses the way Dreyfus perceived the world, challenged many of its assumptions and contextualized it in the style of a rabbinical midrash, a process that created what Alfred called a “phantasmagoria” of the Affair that bears his name, and also interprets the man, his milieu and his mentality in the style of a midrash, a creative, transformative reading.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simms, Norman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Simms, Norman

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simms, Norman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Masks in the Mirror: Marranism in Jewish Experience

Points of Contact: A Study of the Interplay and Intersection of Traditional

My Cow Comes to Haunt Me: European Explorers, Travellers, and Novelists Constructing Textual Selves

My Cow Comes to Haunt Me: European Explorers, Travellers, and Novelists Constructing Textual Selves

In the Context of His Times: Alfred Dreyfus as Lover, Intellectual, Poet, and Jew (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History)

Alfred Dreyfus: Man, Milieu, Mentality and Midrash (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History)

Marranos on the Moradas: Secret Jews and Penitentes in the Southwestern United States from 1590 to 1890 (Judaism and Jewish Life)

Alfred Dreyfus: Man, Milieu, Mentality and Midrash (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History)