Description
Book SynopsisA thirteenth-century text purporting to represent a debate between a Jew and a Christian begins with the latter''s exposition of the virgin birth, something the Jew finds incomprehensible at the most basic level, for reasons other than theological: Speak to me in French and explain your words! he says. Gloss for me in French what you are saying in Latin! While the Christian and the Jew of the debate both inhabit the so-called Latin Middle Ages, the Jew is no more comfortable with Latin than the Christian would be with Hebrew. Communication between the two is possible only through the vernacular.
In Vernacular Voices, Kirsten Fudeman looks at the roles played by language, and especially medieval French and Hebrew, in shaping identity and culture. How did language affect the way Jews thought, how they interacted with one another and with Christians, and who they perceived themselves to be? What circumstances and forces led to the rise of a medieval Jewish tradition in Fren
Trade Review
"Vernacular Voices marks Kirsten Fudeman as a scholar whose work should be followed closely and learned from. She has written a pathbreaking book that displays her linguistic expertise and her impressive methodological sophistication." * Elisheva Baumgarten, author of Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe *
"This study by a fine scholar on the topic of the role of the vernacular in medieval French Jewry is a fascinating and an enlightening volume. . . . A significant contribution to medieval Jewish history and to the study of the popular religion of the period." * Religious Studies Review *
Table of Contents
Notes on Translations and Transcription and Typological Conventions
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The Medieval French Jewish Community in Its Linguistic Context
Chapter 1. Language and Identity
Chapter 2. Speech and Silence, Male and Female in Jewish-Christian Relations: Blois, 1171
Chapter 3. Texts of Two Colors
Chapter 4. Hebrew-French Wedding Songs: Expressions of Identity
Epilogue
Appendices
1. Hebraico-French Glosses and Texts
2. The Medieval Jewish Wedding Song 'Uri liqra'ti yafah, gentis kallah einoreie
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
