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Broadens the perspective of recent work on the discourse of the Muslim Other in medieval Christendom by investigating pertinent texts, art, and artefacts, situating these local discourses of the Muslim Other in the larger cultural context of proto-Eurocentric discourse.
Unlike most other ancient European, Near Eastern, and Mediterranean civilizations, Jewish culture surprisingly developed no early epic tradition: while the Bible comprises a broad range of literary genres, epic is not among them. Not until the late medieval period, Beginning in the fourteenth century, did an extensive and thriving epic tradition emerge in Yiddish. Among the few dozen extant early epics, there are several masterpieces, of which ten are translated into English in this volume. Divided between the religious and the secular, the book includes eight epics presented in their entirety, an illustrative excerpt from another epic, and a brief heroic prose tale.These texts have been chosen as the best and the most interesting representatives of the genre in terms of cultural history and literary quality: the pious “epicizing” of biblical narrative, the swashbuckling medieval courtly epic, Arthurian romance, heroic vignettes, intellectual high art, and popular camp.
This volume is the first comprehensive anthology of early Yiddish literature (from its beginnings in the twelfth century to the dawn of modern Yiddish in the mid-eighteenth century) for more than one hundred years. It includes the broad range of genres that define the corpus: Arthurian romance, heroic epic, satire, lyric, drama, biblical/midrashic epic, devotional literature, biblical translations, glosses, medicine, magic, legal texts, oaths, letters, legends, autobiography, travelogue, fables, riddles, and adventure tales. One hundred and thirty texts in the original Hebrew alphabet, edited anew from the earliest extant sources, are provided with introductory headnotes that include detailed information concerning sources, author (if known), the research literature, and the place of the text in the literary tradition.
A unique analysis of the intensive interest in Jewish culture of early modern Christian Humanists as a part of their comprehensive program of study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The book focuses on how that interest was particularly manifested in a score of treatises on Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Yiddish language and literature.
Examines gender issues that appear in the heroic epics Nibelungenlied, Diu Dlage, and Kudrun, all of which revolve around women. Reviews the conventional scholarship, and discusses property and power, intimate conversations and political strategies, Teuton as Amazon, sovereignty and class, and other topics. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This book is a comprehensive introductory manual that guides beginners to a functional reading knowledge of late medieval and early modern Yiddish (c.1100-1750). It is the first such manual to exist for that language, whose early literary tradition comprises a range of genres as broad as other contemporary European literary traditions. The guide is organized as a series of progressively more complex lessons, focused on key texts of the literary corpus, which are presented in their authentic form as found in manuscripts and early printed books. The lessons seek to accommodate readers ranging from absolute beginners to those who might already know Hebrew, medieval German, or modern Yiddish. Th...
Jean Baumgarten's Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, thoroughly revised from the first edition and translated into English, provides students and scholars of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern European cultures with an exemplary survey of the broad and deep literary tradition in Yiddish. Baumgarten conceives of his work as the study of an entire culture via its literature, and thus he conceives of literature in a broad sense: he begins with four chapters addressing pertinent issues of the larger cultural context of the literature and moves on to a consideration of the primary genres in which the culture is expressed (epic, romance, prose narrative, drama, biblical translation and commentary, ethical and moral treatises, prayers, and the broad range of literature of daily use - medical, legal, and historical). In the field of early Yiddish studies the book will be the standard of intellectual breadth and scholarly excellence for decades to come. In this second edition, the hundreds of text citations and bibliographical references that are the scholarly basis of the study have been verified, and the citations translated anew directly from the original source.
This Companion to the Nibelungenlied draws on the expertise of scholars from Germany, Britain, and the United States to offer the reader fresh perspectives on a wide variety of topics regarding the epic: the latest theories regarding manuscript tradition, authorship, conflict, combat, and politics, the Otherworld and its inhabitants, eroticism (in both the Nibelungenlied and Wagner's Ring), the twentieth-century reception both of the Nibelungenlied and of its most intriguing protagonist, Kriemhild, key concepts used by the poet, the heroic, feudal, and courtly elements in the work, and an analysis of archetypal elements from the perspective of Jungian psychology.
This is a 16th century Yiddish verse romance which relates the adventures of the hero Bovo d'Antona. The poet spins an episodic tale of friendship and betrayal, of disguise and discovery, and of knightly battles. Professor Smith's prose translation makes this little book accessible to the English-speaking public for the first time.