Yiddish literature

Yiddish literature encompasses all those belles-lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Europe, is evident in its literature. It is generally described as having three historical phases: Old Yiddish literature; Haskalah and Hasidic literature; and modern Yiddish literature. While firm dates for these periods are hard to pin down, Old Yiddish can be said to have existed roughly from 1300 to 1780; Haskalah and Hasidic literature from 1780 to about 1890; and modern Yiddish literature from 1864 to the present. Yiddish literature began with translations of and commentary on religious texts. (See article on the Yiddish language for a full description of these texts.) The most important writer of old Yiddish literature was Elijah Levita (known as Elye Bokher) who translated and adapted the chivalric romance of Bevis of Hampton, via its Italian version, Buovo d’Antona. Levita’s version, called Bovo d'Antona, and later known with the title Bovo-bukh, was circulated in manuscript from 1507, then published in Isny (Germany) in 1541. This work illustrates the influence of European literary forms on emerging Yiddish literature, not only in its subject but in the form of its stanzas and rhyme scheme, an adaptation of Italian ottava rima. Nonetheless, Levita altered many features of the story to reflect Judaic elements, though they rest uneasily with the essentially Christian nature of chivalry. (For a discussion of the tension between Christian and Jewish elements in the Bovo-bukh, see chapter two of Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch.) A number of Yiddish epic poems appeared in the 14-15th centuries. The most important works of this genre are the Shmuel-Bukh and the Mlokhim-Bukh – chivalric romances about king David and other Biblical heroes. The stanzaic form of these poems resembles that of the Nibelungenlied.