Introduction To Old Yiddish Literature

by Baumgarten, Jean; Frakes, Jerold C.

• ISBN13: 9780199276332
• ISBN10: 0199276331
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The field of early Yiddish studies has so far only been accessible to specialist scholars. This remarkable study opens up to a more general audience the cultural richness of that broad and deep corpus of literature that stretches from its beginnings in the Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth century. The literature spans a wide spectrum of genres, from love lyric to kabbalistic treatises, and from travelogue to Renaissance adventure epic. The diverse world of Ashkenazic Jewry comes alive in this survey of its literature.

Author Biography

Jean Baumgarten is Directeur de Recherche (CNRS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre des Hautes Etudes Juives, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Jerold C. Frakes is Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	xx
1 The Invention of a Language: Yiddish among the European Vernaculars	1	(25)
2 The Emergence of Yiddish Literature and the Crisis in Jewish Society	26	(12)
3 The Printing, Distribution, and Audience of Yiddish Books	38	(34)
4 Bilingualism and the Development of Old Yiddish Literature	72	(10)
5 Yiddish Bibles	82	(46)
6 Medieval Epic and Romance in Yiddish	128	(35)
7 Ella Levita and the Romanzo Cavalleresco	163	(44)
8 Books of Morality and Conduct	207	(53)
Ethico-Mystical Treatises in Yiddish	237	(11)
The Books of Custom and Conduct: Minhogim sforim	248	(12)
9 Prayer in the Vernacular	260	(36)
Tkhinous `Prayers of Supplication'	274	(11)
Yiddish and Bilingual Rites of Daily Prayer (sidurim) and Holiday Prayers (makhzourim)	285	(11)
10 Yiddish Narrative	296	(32)
11 Terrestrial Suffering in a Topsy-Turvy World	328	(58)
Megilas Vints: An Historical Poem on the Pogrom in Frankfurt am Main in 1616	328	(13)
Yiddish Medical Texts (Fourteenth-Eighteenth Centuries)	341	(18)
Purim-shpil and the Jewish Carnivalesque Tradition	359	(27)
Conclusion: From the Old to the New	386	(2)
Glossary	388	(3)
Bibliography	391	(54)
Index	445