Studies in Medieval Jewish Poetry

From Iraq to Spain, from Germany to Cataluña, from Italy to Yemen, poetry has been for centuries a privileged mode of expression in the Jewish world. Sometimes borrowing from the poetry of the land in which they lived, but always reinventing it in relationship to the Hebrew language and to the Jewish cultural references, the "medieval" Hebrew poets created an immense, variegated and fascinating corpus. In this book, some of the best specialist of the field analyse different themes and authors of this tradition, providing new insights to well-known authors or proposing less celebrated works as equally worthy of study. As a result of this scholarship, the English reader will be able to penetrate the different social and historical contexts of significant portions of Medieval Hebrew poetry as well as the cultural implications of technical choices apparently neutral.

Alessandro Guetta, PhD (1993) in Philosophy, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, is professor of Jewish Thought at Inalco, Paris. He has published extensively on the intellectual history of Italian Judaism, including Philosophy and Kabbalah. His latest work is Elijah Benamozegh and the Reconciliation of Western Thought and Jewish Esotericism (SUNY Press, 2008).

Masha Itzhaki, PhD (1979) Tel Aviv University, teaches Hebrew literature in INALCO Paris. She is the author of many books and papers on Hebrew medieval poetry and about Israeli literature. Her books include Jardin d'Eden, Jardin d'Espagne, (BNF & Sueil, Paris 1993), Yehuda Ha-Levi, from Toledo to Jerusalem, (Albin Michel, Paris 1997), Poésie hébraïqe amoureuse, (Somogy, Paris 2000).