BU Humanists at Work: Anita Savo, Assistant Professor of Spanish
Assistant Professor of Spanish Anita Savo became interested in the medieval period early on when she took a Spanish language survey course offered by her high school. Although the class covered many time periods and authors, she found herself fascinated with medieval Iberian literature because of what she describes as her “double distance” to the texts, or the challenge of reading about a culture she is removed from in a non-native language.
One of her first encounters in this class was with Don Juan Manuel, a 14th-century nobleman and writer. Savo was struck by his unconventional authorship because in 14th-century Iberia, it was rare for someone other than the king or the clergy to disseminate their ideas as written word. It was also fairly unusual to write in Castilian, the language of everyday interactions, instead of Latin, the main language of learning. By writing in Castilian, Juan Manuel created space for people like him, or nobles without much formal education, to participate in intellectual culture. As a nobleman who was not in line to inherit the throne, his authorship is precarious; he is arrogant about his nobility yet careful not to overstep when writing political advice. Savo’s interest in Juan Manuel’s authorship has followed her from high school, to a Spanish major at BU, to a PhD in Hispanic Studies from Yale, and finally back to BU as a professor. Juan Manuel became the subject of her dissertation, which led to her first monograph, Portraying Authorship: Juan Manuel and the Rhetoric of Authority, published last year by the University of Toronto Press.
Looking to future projects, Savo has decided to broaden her studies and represent a more nuanced history of the Iberian Peninsula. Five centuries ago, the Iberian Peninsula had an entirely different religious and linguistic makeup, and because of this, Savo explains, “I see myself as a scholar of medieval Iberia, and I use that word deliberately, not Spain, because first of all, Spain is the modern nation that didn’t exist in the Middle Ages. But also because when we think of Spain, we think of the history of a place that was written by the victors, that is, the Christians, because beginning in 1492, there was no more Islamic kingdom on the peninsula, and the Jews of Spain were expelled by the Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabella.”
In her upcoming work in progress, Algarabía: Language Anxiety in Medieval Castile, she will continue exploring a point of familiarity, medieval Castilian texts, with a focus on how the Arabic language contributed to Castilian literature. She explains that her book on Juan Manuel, a Christian author who wrote in Castilian, “doesn’t fully reflect who I aspired to be as a scholar, because it only includes one piece of the puzzle that is medieval Iberian society and literature.” Savo’s aspiration to study the Iberian Peninsula as a place with several languages and cultures has motivated her to study Arabic over the last eleven years. For her new project, Savo is using her Arabic experience to examine interactions between Christians and Muslims in Castilian works. Because Don Juan Manuel’s uncle, King Alfonso X, had dozens of scholarly works about astronomy and science translated from Arabic to Castilian, Savo understood that Christians saw Arabic intellectual culture as both a treasure to be appropriated and a rival to be eliminated. She is interested in how Christian writers aimed to displace Arabic and make Castilian a language associated with cultural and intellectual pursuits.
With this aim in mind, Castilian writers often portrayed the Arabic language and its speakers poorly in their literature. Savo cites an epic poem about the military exploits of King Alfonso XI as an example. Throughout the poem, the writer uses a translation convention where Arabic speech is written in Castilian so readers can understand. However, there is a moment where the Christians have a decisive victory, and a Muslim leader speaks in Arabic. In the transliterated phrase, the leader refers to his defeat as “caca,” a word for excrement in Spanish and colloquial Arabic. The poem, therefore, only invokes Arabic to associate it with low value and defeat. Savo is interested in this moment because at other points in the epic, Muslims are portrayed as sympathetic people with complex emotions. However, since Muslim characters in the epic only express complexity through Castilian, the Castilian author still positions the Arabic language as culturally irrelevant.
Savo, however, believes that this dynamic is complex because in other medieval Castilian works, like the Libro de Buen Amor, Arabic is portrayed as a “living language with communicative power.” This 14th-century work follows a priest as he tries to seduce a variety of women, including nuns. However, when he tries to seduce a Muslim woman, she answers him in Arabic and rejects him clearly, telling him to be quiet. In this example, a woman asserts autonomy over a man who has authority, positioning Arabic as a powerful language.
Encounters across languages like these will continue to inform Savo’s efforts to position Muslim, Jewish, and Christian experiences within the literary history of the Iberian Peninsula. While her work in progress will incorporate her past research interests of authorship and Castilian Spanish, she hopes that it will more accurately represent the diverse religious and linguistic history of the Iberian Peninsula.