“An Ancient Psalm, a Modern Song” : : Italian Translations of Hebrew Literature in the Early Modern Period / / Alessandro Guetta.

• Superior document: Studies in Jewish History and Culture ; 72
• VerfasserIn: Guetta, Alessandro,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2022.
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Jewish History and Culture ; 72.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (327 pages)
• Notes: This volume presents dozens of classical Hebrew texts translated into literary Italian. It is the first study of an almost ignored corpus, showing the degree of cultural and linguistic integration of the Jews of Italy long before the German Haskala.

This volume presents the culmination of research on an almost ignored literary corpus: the translations into literary Italian of classical Hebrew texts made by Jews between 1550 and 1650. It includes dozens of poetical and philosophical texts and wisdom literature as well as dictionaries and biblical translations produced in what their authors viewed as a national tongue, common to Christians and Jews. In so doing, the authors/translators explicitly left behind the so-called Judeo-Italian. These texts, many of them being published for the first time, are studied in the context of intellectual and literary history. The book is an original contribution showing that the linguistic acculturation of German Jews in the late 18th century occurred in Italy 150 years earlier.

Table of Contents

Preface -- Introduction -- 1 Hebrew-Italian Dictionaries -- 1 The Dictionaries as Daily Tools for Didactic Purposes -- 2 An Encyclopedic Dictionary in Praise of “Jewish Civilization”: David de Pomi’s Tzemaḥ David -- 2 Biblical Translations -- 1 Jewish-Italian Biblical Translations in the Age of Counter-Reformation -- 2 David de Pomi on Ecclesiastes: A “Jewish” Translation, a “Catholic” Commentary -- 3 Glossaries as Disguised Biblical Translations -- 4 “A Pure and Clean Language”: A Crypto-Protestant Translation and the Jewish Italian Versions of the Bible -- 5 Antonio Brucioli and His Italian Translation of the Bible -- 6 Jewish Translations Inspired by Brucioli -- 7 Leone Modena’s Galut Yehuda and the Call to Be No Longer “Alien Residents” of the Italian Language -- 8 The Venice Haggada of 1609 -- 3 Philosophical Lexicons -- 4 Translations of Philosophical Books -- 1 “More Divine Than Plato”: Erudizione de’ confusi, by Yedidya Ben Moshe Recanati (Rimini), a Late Renaissance Italian Translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed -- 2 Il libro degli Articoli, an Anonymous Translation of Yosef Albo’s Sefer ha-‘iqqarim -- 5 From Poetry to Poetry -- 1 The Poetical Translation of the Psalms by Leone Sommo -- 2 A Spiritual and Aesthetic Need: Italian Liturgical Translations of the 16th and 17th Centuries as Examples of “Jewish Spiritual Poetry” -- 3 Translations as a Religious/Literary Task: The Work of Yehuda Ḥayyim Carpi -- 4 Poetical Paraphrases of the Tale of Purim -- 5 A Translation of the Binding of Isaac? -- 6 Why Translate from Hebrew? For Whom? -- 7 “Let Us Cry in Deep Sorrow”: The Elegy on the “Martyrs” of Ancona, 1556 -- 8 The Elegy on the Burning of the Talmud -- 6 An Italian Shabbath -- 1 “An Ancient Psalm, a Modern Song”: The Zemirot (Songs) for Shabbath -- 7 Jewish and Universal Wisdom in Translation -- 1 The Italian and Latin Versions of Pirqe avot -- 2 From Mantua to Paris: The Translations of Philippe d’ Aquin -- 3 Wisdom in Verses: The Rhymed Translation of the Sayings of Various Sages -- Conclusion: Found in Translation -- Bibliografia.