Studies In Medieval Jewish Poetry

Analysing well-known Hebrew medieval poets from a new, refreshing standpoint and focusing on less known authors and periods, this book shows the maturity of the research in this field. Written in English (and French) the articles make the Hebrew texts more easily available to scholars of comparative literature.

The basic concept of this book is that in spite of the borrowed Arabic poetical values, medieval Hebrew poetry stubbornly distanced itself from Arabic poetry. The conclusive result of an in-depth comparative examination is that Hebrew poetry combined selective Arabic poetical values with ethical Jewish values to create a distinctive poetical school.

The Jewish poets of medieval Spain combined elements of the dominant Arabic-Islamic culture with Jewish religious and literary traditions to create a rich new Hebrew literature that is as richly entertaining today as it was in the twelfth century. In this delight delightful book, Scheindlin presents the original Hebrew poetry with his own melodic English translations, each followed by commentary that explains its cultural context.

The Spanish Rabbi-poets, among them Yehudah Halevi and Ibn Gavirol actually used themes from love poetry and from Arabic philosophy to express religious ideas. These Hebrew poets wrote with a sensuousness that would have been unacceptable to earlier gener

Translated excerpts from 17 Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew commentaries on biblical poetry, written between the 9th and the 17th centuries. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In the Middle Ages, unconventional theological views were often expressed in poetic form. Jakob Petuchowski provides parallel texts of ten medieval theological poems in the standard liturgy that express unconventional and daring theological ideas, each with a commentary on the poem and its author, and a survey of Jewish thought on its particular theme.

A Matter of Geography deals with medieval secular Hebrew poetry from Spain and elsewhere, based on a “center and periphery” model. It delineates how Spanish school strove for centrality, as well as how the poets from elsewhere coped with it.

The central feature of this book is an innovative critical approach, which understands medieval Hebrew poetry not only by revealing its ties with Arabic poetry but also by determining the specific characteristics by which it stubbornly distinguished itself from Arabic poetry.