Jewish Poetry and Cultural Coexistence in Late Medieval Spain, by Gregory B. Kaplan

Abstract

This is an original study that offers a new critical perspective on a canonical and foundational genre of medieval Spanish literature, cuaderna vía poetry. This genre consists of poems written in quatrains of Alexandrine verses (lines of 14 syllables) that use consonantal rhyme. Gregory Kaplan here virtually writes the history of Jewish cuaderna vía poetry in medieval Spain. The book begins with an overview of the genre’s origins, and goes on to examine examples of cuaderna vía poetry composed by Jews in the Peninsula and to explore the form’s survival among Sephardic Jews in the Diaspora. The study is comprised of an overarching historical narrative in which Kaplan includes close readings of key texts. While important medieval Castilian texts such as the Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de buen amor have long been studied as representative of the poetry written in cuaderna vía, which is almost exclusively associated...