Ryan Szpiech, Romance Languages and Literatures | 2018-2019
Spanish 450: “Inventing Spanish. The Cultural World of Alfonso X” and other sections. Spanish is today one of the world’s most spoken languages, but in its early stages of development in the late Middle Ages, it was only one among various local dialects. How did this remarkable transformation take place in the case of Castilian, while the other dialects of Spain remain today only regional languages? This course studies the “invention” of the Spanish language during the reign of one of Iberia’s greatest kings — Alfonso X, “The Wise,” who reigned in Castile from 1252-1284. We trace Alfonso’s ambitious translating project that transformed Castilian into a written language of prose expression, taking the place of Latin in Castilian courts. We will learn how Alfonso, working in the city of Seville, ordered translations of Arabic writing into his local dialect, thus using Castilian (which later became modern-day Spanish) for the first time for science, law, history, fictional prose, and religion. Students will see how this use of Castilian was put on display not only in books, but also on the walls of the palaces and monuments taken over by Alfonso in the conquest of Muslim Iberia. Students will also gain first-hand experience working with early forms of Spanish in manuscripts and in inscriptions and monuments, including the Alcazar fortress of Seville and the Cathedral of Seville, which includes sections of the Muslim mosque where Alfonso and his descendants made their royal tombs and decorated them in Arabic, Castilian, Hebrew, and Latin. By reading the literature and studying the monuments of medieval Iberia–specifically those projects realized by Alfonso X and his descendants in the earliest moments of the use of Castilian for both literary and political purposes–student will trace the birth of the Spanish language. They will learn how translation from Arabic transformed one unremarkable local Romance dialect of a small European kingdom into one of the world’s three most-spoken languages.