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E-book
Author Einbinder, Susan L

Title Writing Plague : Jewish Responses to the Great Italian Plague
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022
©2022

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Description 1 online resource (273 pages)
Series Jewish Culture and Contexts Ser
Jewish Culture and Contexts Ser
Contents Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Poetry, Prose, and Pestilence: Joseph Concio and Jewish Responses to the 1630-31 Italian Plague -- Chapter 2. Narrating Plague: Abraham Catalano and Abraham Massarani -- Chapter 3. Interpolated Poetry: When Prose Is Not Enough -- Chapter 4. Jewish Plague Liturgy from Medieval and Early Modern Italy -- Chapter 5. Plague from the Pulpit: Rabbi Solomon Marini in Padua -- Chapter 6. Eulogies, Laments, and Epitaphs: The Death of the Narrator -- Appendix 1. Sermon Outlines by Solomon Marini -- Appendix 2. Burial and Poetic Eulogies for Abraham Catalano by Solomon Marini and Moses Catalano -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary A wave of plague swept the cities of northern Italy in 1630-31, ravaging Christian and Jewish communities alike. In Writing Plague Susan L. Einbinder explores the Hebrew texts that lay witness to the event. These Jewish sources on the Great Italian Plague have never been treated together as a group, Einbinder observes, but they can contribute to a bigger picture of this major outbreak and how it affected people, institutions, and beliefs; how individuals and institutions responded; and how they did or did not try to remember and memorialize it. High self-consciousness characterizes many of the authorial voices, and the sophisticated and deliberate ways these authors represented themselves reveal a complex process of self-fashioning that equally contours the representation and meaning of plague. Conversely, it is under the strain of plague that conventions of self-fashioning come to the fore.In the end, what proves most striking is how quickly these accounts retreated into obscurity. Why was this plague, which was among the most documented of all outbreaks since the Black Death of the fourteenth century, ultimately consigned to silence in Jewish memory? Did the memory take shape outside the written or material remains that we typically consult, in ephemeral forms that were lost over time? How much were the official genres of commemoration responsible for the erosion of historical particularity? How much did these conventionalized forms of mourning help individuals find language for private experience? And how, conversely, was private experience reconfigured to signify public grief?Throughout Writing Plague, Einbinder unearths and analyzes a cluster of little-known texts, reading them as much for the things about which they remain silent as for the things they seem openly to express. It is a compelling hybrid work of literary criticism and historical reflection about premodern constructions of self and community
Analysis Abraham Catalano
Abraham Massarani
Hebrew
Italian
Italy
Jewish
Mantua
Rabbi Solomon of Marini
black death
collective memory
community
early modern
epitaph
eulogy
forgetting forgetfulness
ghetto
grief
history
lament
literature
liturgy
natural disaster
padua
pandemic
plague narratives
plague
poetry
private public
representation
self-fashioning
seventeenth century
Notes Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources
Subject Hebrew literature -- Italy -- History and criticism
Hebrew literature -- Italy -- History -- 17th century
Jewish literature -- Italy -- History -- 17th century
Jews -- Italy -- History -- 17th century
Plague in literature.
Plague -- Italy -- History -- 17th century
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies.
Hebrew literature
Jewish literature
Jews
Plague
Plague in literature
Italy
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 1512822884
9781512822885