Modern Ladino Culture: Press, Belles Lettres, and Theater in the Late Ottoman Empire (Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies)

Olga Borovaya explores the emergence and expansion of print culture in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the mother tongue of the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She provides the first comprehensive study of the three major forms of Ladino literary production—the press, belles lettres, and theater—as a single cultural phenomenon. The product of meticulous research and innovative methodology, Modern Ladino Culture offers a new perspective on the history of the Ladino press, a novel approach to the study of belles lettres in Ladino and their relationship to their European sources, and a fine-grained critique of Sephardic plays as venues for moral education and politicization. Introduction The press. The emergence of modern cultural production in Ladino : the Sephardi press The press in Salonica : a case study Belles lettres. The serialized novel as rewriting Ladino fiction : case studies Theater. Sephardi theater : project and practice Ladino drama : case studies Conclusion. Explores the literary culture of the Ottoman Empire's Sephardic Jews