Jewish Literary Eros

"Isabelle Levy offers a thoughtful analysis of the genre of prosimetra by Jewish writers during the Middle Ages in Europe. She adeptly demonstrates how they fused different linguistic and cultural traditions in their works, from the Arabic and Hebrew cultures of Andalusian Spain, and of the Islamic world more broadly, to Christendom's Latin and local vernacular poetic movements. Writers such as Immanuel ha-Romi stood at the conjunction of multiple cultures, borrowing from sources as distinct as Hebrew maqama and Dante's Vita Nuova. With Jewish Literary Eros, Isabelle Levy bridges the different fields of knowledge necessary to understand the medieval Jewish tradition."—Fabian Alfie, University of Arizona

"In Jewish Literary Eros: Between Poetry and Prose in the Medieval Mediterranean, Isabelle Levy delivers on the title—and then some. She tackles the theme of love as it emerges in the mixed form, in which poetry and prose alternate, in Hebrew, Arabic, and Romance languages and literatures. The book gives readers the best of Mediterranean studies and the global Middle Ages."—Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard University

"Isabelle Levy's Jewish Literary Eros provides a virtuosic analysis of a combined form of prose and poetry across three literary cultures of the medieval Mediterranean: Hebrew, Arabic, and Romance. Levy deftly unravels the Hebrew hybrid forms that emerged from the interplay with Iberian Arabic, Dante's Italian, and the world of courtly romance. Her skillful exploration of medieval and early modern writing about love is a triumph of scholarship and a feat of graceful prose."—Elisheva Carlebach, Salo W. Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society, Columbia University

"Levy's Jewish Literary Eros seamlessly moves across linguistic domains—Hebrew, Arabic and Romance—to reconnoiter the interweaving of poetry and prose in medieval Jewish literature on love. A stunning work of literary scholarship, its fine readings on the intimate bonds between love and poetry in Jewish prosimetra secure their place as premodern classics of world literature within a capacious comparative setting."—Luis M. Girón Negrón, Harvard University