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In Dominion Built of Praise, Jonathan Decter looks at the phenomenon of panegyric in Mediterranean Jewish culture from several overlapping perspectives-social, historical, ethical, poetic, political, and theological-and finds that they depict how representations of Jewish political leadership varied across space and evolved over time.
List of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Performance Matters: Between Public Acclamation and Epistolary Exchange
Chapter 2. Poetic Gifts: Maussian Exchange and the Working of Medieval Jewish Culture
Chapter 3. "Humble Like the Humble One": The Language of Jewish Political Legitimacy
Chapter 4. "Sefarad Boasts over Shinar": Mediterranean Regionalism in Jewish Panegyric
Chapter 5. "A Word Aptly Spoken": The Ethics of Praise
Chapter 6. "A Cedar Whose Stature in the Garden of Wisdom . . . ": Hyperbole, the Imaginary, and the Art of Magnification
Chapter 7. In Praise of God, in Praise of Man: Issues in Political Theology
Chapter 8. "May His Book Be Burnt Even Though It Contains Your Praise!": Jewish Panegyric in the Christian Mediterranean
Chapter 9. The Other "Great Eagle": Interreligious Panegyrics and the Limits of Interpretation
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
About the author
Jonathan Decter
