- Home
- Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies
- literary criticism
- history
- Jewish Literary Eros
Jewish Literary Eros
Between Poetry and Prose in the Medieval Mediterranean
By: Isabelle Levy
Series: Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies
210 Pages
- eBook
- ISBN: 9780253060174
- Published By: Indiana University Press
- Published: June 2022
$44.99
Checkout as a guest, login to your user account or create a new user profile for faster check out the next time you submit a book review request.
In Jewish Literary Eros, Isabelle Levy explores the originality and complexity of medieval Jewish writings. Examining medieval prosimetra (texts composed of alternating prose and verse), Levy demonstrates that secular love is the common theme across Arabic, Hebrew, French, and Italian texts. At the crossroads of these spheres of intellectual activity, Jews of the medieval Mediterranean composed texts that combined dominant cultures' literary stylings with biblical Hebrew and other elements from Jewish cultures. Levy explores Jewish authors' treatments of love in prosimetra and finds them creative, complex, and innovative.
Jewish Literary Eros compares the mixed-form compositions by Jewish authors of the medieval Mediterranean with their Arabic and European counterparts to find the particular moments of innovation among textual practices by Jewish authors. When viewed in the comparative context of the medieval Mediterranean, the evolving relationship between the mixed form and the theme of love in secular Jewish compositions refines our understanding of the ways in which the Jewish literature of the period negotiates the hermeneutic and theological underpinnings of Islamicate and Christian literary traditions.
Isabelle Levy is MA Program Director and Lecturer at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University. She was previously a Fulbright fellow in Spain. She researches medieval Jewish literature of the medieval Mediterranean with respect to Arabic and Romance counterparts.