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Zusatztext Jerold Frakes's translation and revision of Jean Baumgarten's history of Old Yiddish literature is a welcome addition to the limited library of books in English on early Yiddish language and literature; Baumgarten's book is the best available history of and introduction to Yiddish literature of the medieval and early modern periods. It is a work that anyone with an interest in the development of vernacular literature or in religion and literature in the medieval and early modern periods should know. Informationen zum Autor Jean Baumgarten is Directeur de Recherche (CNRS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre d' Etudes Juives, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.Jerold C. Frakes is Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Southern California. Klappentext 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. Zusammenfassung 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. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1: The Invention of a Language: Yiddish among the European Vernaculars 2: The Emergence of Yiddish Literature and the Crisis in Jewish Society 3: The Printing, Distribution, and Audience of Yiddish Books 4: Bilingualism and the Development of Old Yiddish LIterature 5: Yiddish Bibles 6: Medieval Epic and Romance in Yiddish 7: Elia Bahur Levita and the `romanzo cavalleresco' 8: Books of Morality and Custom 9: Prayer in the Vernacular 10: Yiddish Narrative 11: Terrestrial Suffering in a Topsy-Turvy World Conclusion: From the Old to the New ...
