Emergence of Early Yiddish Literature

While much early Yiddish literature belonged to pious genres, quasi-secular genres-epic, drama, and lyric-also developed. Jerold Frakes contends that the historical context of the emergence of Yiddish literature is an essential factor in any understanding of its cultural relevance in a time and place where Jewish life was defined by expulsions, massacres, and discriminatory legislation that profoundly altered European Judaism and shook the very foundations of traditional Jewish society.

Autorentext

Jerold C. Frakes is SUNY Distinguished Professor of English at the University at Buffalo.

Inhalt

Preface
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
2. "Whither am I to Go?": Old Yiddish Love Song in a European Context
3. (Non-)Intersecting Parallel Lives: Pasquino in Rome and on the Rialto
4. Purimplay as Political Action in Diasporic Europe and/as Ancient Persia
5. Queen Vashti and Political Revolution: Gender Politics in a Topsy-Turvy World
6. The Political Liminality of Mordecai in Early Ashkenaz
7. Feudal Bridal-Quest Turned on its Jewish Head
8. The Other of Another Other: Yiddish Epic's Discarded Muslim Enemy
9. Conclusion
   Appendix: Elia Levita's Short Poems (English translation)
   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index