Frakes Jerold C. The Emergence of Early Yiddish Literature: Cultural Translation in Ashkenaz

Indiana University Press, 2017. — 302 p. — (German Jewish Cultures). — ISBN: 9780253025517. — ASIN 0253025516While much early Yiddish literature belonged to pious genres, quasi-secular genres-epic, drama, and lyric-also developed. Jerold Frakes contends that the historical context of the emergence of Yiddish literature is an essential factor in any understanding of its cultural relevance in a time and place where Jewish life was defined by expulsions, massacres, and discriminatory legislation that profoundly altered European Judaism and shook the very foundations of traditional Jewish society.