The Golden Way: The Hebrew Sonnet during the Renaissance and the Baroque.

AuthorAndreatta, Michela

The Golden Way: The Hebrew Sonnet during the Renaissance and the Baroque. By DVORA BREGMAN. Translated by ANN BRENER. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 304. Tempe: ARIZONA CENTER FOR MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES, 2006. Pp. i + 298. $45.

It is hitherto little known that Hebrew was the earliest language to adopt the sonnet after Italian, in which this poetic form had made its first appearance in the thirteenth century. This peculiar circumstance was rooted in the long-lasting presence of Jews in Italy and the constant cultural interchange which marked their relationship with the surrounding non-Jewish environment. Immanuel of Rome (c. 1265-1335), who knew and was inspired by the works of Dante, composed the earliest surviving Hebrew sonnets and gave this verse form the shape it was to maintain for the centuries to come, largely identical with the classical Petrarchan pattern. After his work the Hebrew sonnet apparently fell into decline until the sixteenth century, when first in Italy and then also in the Ottoman Empire and Holland, it was resumed and flourished anew. The fascinating history of the Hebrew sonnet from its first appearance in medieval Italy through its subsequent development during the Renaissance and the Baroque is the subject of Dvora Bregman's study, first published in Hebrew (Shevil ha-Zahav: Ha-Sonet ha-'Ivri bi-Tequfat ha-Renasans ve-ha-Baroq [Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, Ben Institute, Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev Press, 1995]), and now masterfully translated into English by Ann Brener.

Bregman, a senior professor at Ben-Gurion University and one of the most important scholars in the field of Hebrew poetry written in Italy, undertook her ground-breaking research in the eighties, as a doctoral student at the Hebrew University, under the guidance of the late Dan Pagis. Using manuscripts and hard-to-find printed books, she gathered a corpus of more than four hundred Hebrew sonnets from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (later to be published as an anthology under the title Tzror Zehuvim: Sonetim 'Ivri'im bi-Tequfat ha-Renasans ve-ha-Baroq [Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev Press, 1997]). This remarkable corpus, of which very little was known before this time, along with the early sonnets by Immanuel of Rome, provided the author with the material for the reconstruction of the history and general traits of the Hebrew sonnet from its emergence until the eighteenth century as...

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