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ELIA CARMONA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: JUDEO-SPANISH POPULAR PRESS AND NOVEL PUBLISHING MILIEU IN CONSTANTINOPLE, OTTOMAN EMPIRE, CIRCA 1860-1932. (VOLUMES I AND II) (LADINO, ROMANSO, PICARESQUE)
Abstract
Elia R. Carmona, native of Constantinople, was the most prolific known author of original Judeo-Spanish novels (romansos). Carmona also founded and edited, El Gugeton, longest surviving of the satirical Judeo-Spanish newspapers inaugurated after the 1908 Young Turks revolution. My annotated, Latin-letter transliterated edition of Carmona's autobiography, {Komo Nasio Elia R. Karmona, Komo Se Engrandesio, y Komo Se (H)izo Direktor del "Gugeton"}, makes accessible to an occidental audience Karmona's pseudo-picaresque autobiography. The book is rich in factual information about Judeo-Spanish popular publishing, journalism, and the generational relationships of Carmona's colleagues in Constantinople, Salonika, Smyrna, Alexandria, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Stylistically the self-conscious narrator juxtaposes precise structural, spatial, chronological, and factual details with chaotic or ambiguous elements; the resulting dichotomy contrasts the "implied author's" declared intent with his real motive in writing the book, thus undermining the reader's confidence in what initially seems to be a "reliable narrator." This technique creates irony which Carmona employs to criticize certain people and topics in his story. The dissertation contains five major chapters: introductory background to Sephardic studies, genealogy of the Carmona family and biographical sketch of Carmona, prolegomena to the history of the Judeo-Spanish popular press in the Ottoman empire (censorship, education, the Levantine reading audience and development of journalism), a literary analysis of the autobiography, and an explanation of my method of transliteration from rasi characters with a chart of corresponding characters. Complementing the edited text are contemporary maps and photos, glossaries in both Latin-letter and rasi, and an annotated onomastic list in Latin-letter and rasi.
Subject Area
Romance literature|Biographies
Recommended Citation
LOEWENTHAL, ROBYN KAY, "ELIA CARMONA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: JUDEO-SPANISH POPULAR PRESS AND NOVEL PUBLISHING MILIEU IN CONSTANTINOPLE, OTTOMAN EMPIRE, CIRCA 1860-1932. (VOLUMES I AND II) (LADINO, ROMANSO, PICARESQUE)" (1984). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8503434.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8503434