History and Classical tradition studies

The paper focuses on Tacitus’ account of the speech made by Claudius in 48 CE in favour of the admission of the primores of ‘long-haired’ Gaul to the senate, examining arguments used by the historian to clarify the reactions to their request and the reasoning adopted by the emperor to convince the senators to accept it. Besides expressing awareness of the efficacy of the criteria used by Romans to create a supranational imperial order, the passage shows Tacitus’ ability to highlight the political meaningfulness of Claudius’ intervention, making it a model worthy of surviving and being mentioned many centuries later in modern culture. In this vein, the second part of the paper analyzes some 16th and early 17th century references to the emperor’s speech in authors such as Justus Lipsius, Scipione Ammirato, Jean Bodin, Traiano Boccalini, Hugo Grotius. Within their works, also dedicated to examining the birth, development and decline of States, we see that besides recalling an episode occurring many centuries before, some key-intellectuals made utilized the story into a valid exemplum to promote a model of efficacious government favouring integration as a means of consolidating modern states.

Analysis of some sections of Remigio Nannini's anthologies of historiographical speeches (Venice, Giolito 1557; 1560; 1561), with special reference to the orations taken from Cassius Dio’s ‘Roman History’, in order to show the tendency of the Dominican Compiler to revitalize their meaning and to interpret their content in the light of the political context of late Cinquecento Florence.

This Overview is from the book 'Pliny The Younger: His Words & Phrases' (Pliny As The New Testament Paul), by Roman Piso. This work details the way in which the Letters (Epistles) & Panegyricus of Pliny The Younger should be studied (in contrast to how it had been studied in the past and is still being studied currently).

The paper evaluates works of ancient authors who mention and provide details of the burial of fallen soldiers in ancient Greece, and then it compares them with preserved archaeological finds. Textual analysis shows a long-term tradition of war graves on battlefields. The commanders of the troops provided funeral services in the first place, as the extradition request of bodies was equal to the recognition of defeat. In most cases both sides had enough time to take care of their fallen after the battle, but there were exceptions when the last honors were rather provisional. In addition to burial directly on the battlefield, it seems that, depending on the circumstances, the removal of the remains to the hometown or burial outside the battlefield and outside the home also applies. The tombstones could have various forms, in the case of collective burials, tumuli with stelae bearing the names of the deceased were preferred, in the case of burial of military commanders, tombstones took the form of a monumental statue. Cremation burial is thought to have prevailed over inhumation.

Named after the youngest of the Parcae, Clotho got its name after the deity responsible for spinning the thread of life; thus the journal seeks to create a new space of creativity, exploration, and learning in the field of classical studies. Wilamowitz famously defined classical scholarship “by its subject-matter – Graeco-Roman civilization in its essence and in every facet of its existence.” Following in those footsteps, Clotho welcomes exploring Greek and Latin language – lexicography, grammar, and the broader issues of linguistics. It seeks to investigate the traditional fields of classical studies, literature, textual criticism, rhetoric, philosophy, and history; as well as archaeology, numismatics, epigraphy, papyrology, and paleography. Above all, the journal is committed to the idea of interdisciplinarity. As such, it accepts antiquity-related contributions from the spheres of art, music, science, religion, and law; as well as the classical tradition and classical reception, history of classical scholarship, and last but foremost, translation.

El presente artículo estudia un tipo de arquitectura efímera, el túmulo, en el Chile virreinal visto como un ejemplo de legado clásico. Dichas arquitecturas se presentan como un instrumento de propaganda y consolidación del poder eclesiástico y monárquico. En el ceremonial que acompaña al túmulo, la participación de la ciudadanía será fundamental en el fortalecimiento de la unidad cristiana e imperial.

Con las versiones de anacreónticas que realizaron en edad adolescente, los escritores e intelectuales cubanos José Julián Martí Pérez 1 (La Habana, 1853-Dos Ríos, 1895 y Enrique José Varona y Pera 2 (Puerto Príncipe, 1849-La Habana, 1933 logran representar las dos líneas principales del tipo de traducción que se propone en la época 3 , a mediados del siglo XIX. Varona publicó en 1868 su poemario iniciático Odas anacreónticas en su natal Puerto Príncipe (hoy Camagüey) que contiene doce traducciones de anacreónticas griegas, algunas versiones de poemas de autores latinos como Catulo y Horacio e imitaciones a tono con el anacreontismo hispano dieciochesco en general. En los cuadernos de apuntes de José Martí (exactamente en el número 2), recogidos en el tomo 21 de sus Obras Completas, encontramos nueve versiones de poemas de la Anacreontea, colección helenístico-bizantina que imita el tono y los temas de la poesía del lírico griego arcaico Anacreonte de Teos 4 .

Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, Brasil RESUMEN Este artículo presenta una discusión general a cerca de las identidades culturales en Latinoamérica y sus formulaciones desde matrices europeas, sobre todo aquellas basadas en la cultura grecoromana. Se discute que si la Antigüedad clásica proveyó parámetros iniciales a la comprensión del Nuevo Mundo, también ha contribuido para el obscurecimiento de posibilidades alternativas de identidades.

La présente étude s’attache à l’analyse de la symbiose entre fascisme et catholicisme au sein de l’Istituto di Studi Romani (ISR). Il s’agira de montrer que l’ISR, suivant les exigences du régime et celles du Vatican, jouait un ‘double jeu’, politique et religieux. Ce double jeu est visible, non seulement à travers les activités et les contacts de l’ISR mais aussi dans les publications, c’est-à-dire dans le discours qui, bien que d’une certaine qualité scientifique, est de nature hautement propagandiste. Nous nous baserons sur les nombreuses publications de l’ISR, ainsi que sur des sources d’archives inédites, comprenant certains documents conservés à l’Istituto et dans les archives privées de la famille du fondateur, Carlo Galassi Paluzzi ; les contacts de ce dernier avec d’importantes personnalités politiques et, surtout, ecclésiastiques de l’entre-deux-guerres se révèleront particulièrement importants.

The characteristic image of the Cuzqueño chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, known as El Inca (1539-1616), presents us with a turn-of-the-century—even modernista—interpretation of Baroque culture. Best known from the series of portraits by the Cuzqueño artist Francisco González Gamarra, it is to be found in various types wherever the chronicler is commemorated. He appears as a lean, supercilious gentleman in Hapsburg black and Van Dyke beard, readying a quill pen, with only his gold Incan sun medallion for ornament; his gaze is both penetrating and aloof. The image—which contrasts with the more heavily bearded, less intent earlier portraits of him—shares as much with the cool detachment of Belle Epoque artist-dandies (e.g. Whistler, Montesquiou, D’Annunzio) as with the aristocratic Golden Age writers. The portraits commemorate Garcilaso as a foundational Peruvian writer and embodiment of Mestizo identity, translating into his image the combination of Inca and Spanish imperial cultures that he and his works embodied. But it also folds that function into a new, cosmopolitan ethos and aesthetic that responded to contemporary European imperial accommodations between cultures; and it translates Garcilaso’s double vision (honed by imitation of historians of the Roman empire like Tacitus and Plutarch) into one that assimilates new ironies to old and creates a Latin American subject position—a fresh ideal of the all-seeing historian on his chronotopic height—that is both engaged with and observantly external to world realities.

Un fragmento ficticio de Safo en Ezra Pound: ¿Pseudocita o monólogo dramático? * M.ª José BARRIOS CASTRO RESUMEN El poema Papyrus de Ezra Pound es un fragmento ficticio de la poetisa Safo. Pound fue un profundo conocedor de las literaturas y lenguas clásicas así como un gran admirador de las literaturas orientales. Es por ello por lo que este breve poema puede analizarse como un encuentro complejo entre literaturas antiguas, modernas y orientales desde cuatro perspectivas: la recreación de una voz poética antigua donde Pound asume la máscara de Safo -nos referimos al monólogo dramático creado por Browning-, el texto como invención o cita imaginaria, la presentación del poema en un supuesto estado fragmentario y, finalmente, su relectura como un poema oriental.

Dalla "Nota dell'Editore" in introduzione al libro

La notte del 21 dicembre 2020, in occasione del solstizio d'Inverno, si è tenuto un simposio online cui hanno partecipato Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Aleksandr Dugin, Andrea Scarabelli, Luca Siniscalco, Rainaldo Graziani e, Marginalmente, Maurizio Ulisse Murelli.
Titolo della conversazione "Alla luce di un nuovo sole che sorge - prospettive escatologiche alla fine di questo anno" con l'occhiello della locandina che lanciava l'iniziativa che recitava: "La fine di un'era e l'inizio di un nuovo ciclo segnano il termine di questo anno 2020, ricco di eventi che hanno cambiato completamente l'andamento della storia e la vita dell'umanità intera. Come leggere queste dinamiche e cosa aspettarci dal futuro imminente?".

El libro que aquí reseñamos demuestra cómo la historia de Orfeo ha ejercido una seducción singular en la tradición mítica y en la cultura occidental, desde los poetas y artistas griegos hasta nuestros días. El mítico cantor tracio se ha convertido en un auténtico símbolo universal, el poeta inspirado por excelencia que, con los sones mágicos de su música y de su canto consigue encantar a la propia naturaleza: convocaba y amansaba a animales salvajes, hacía andar a los árboles, atraía a los pájaros, detenía el fluir de los ríos y el soplar de los vientos, conmovía las duras piedras, dulcificaba el carácter de los hombres e incluso, por amor, descendió al mundo de los muertos para rescatar a su mujer Eurídice. El mito de Orfeo, a secas, incide por tanto en el carácter mágico de su música, presente en todos los episodios de su historia: su aventura con los argonautas, su catábasis en pos de su esposa y su muerte y despedazamiento a manos de las mujeres tracias. Música, amor y muerte son, por tanto, los temas que configuran su mito y que los profesores Carlos García Gual y David Hernández de la Fuente, buenos conocedores de los entresijos de la mitología griega y su tradición, analizan de un modo claro y elegante en la primera parte del libro: «El mito de Orfeo. Encrucijada de la música, el amor y la muerte» (pp. 9-84). El estudio se detiene en el origen del héroe y en esos capítulos míticos de su historia, pero también analiza su estructura, sus temas, su simbolismo e interpretaciones (entre lo apolíneo y lo dionisíaco, los aspectos chamánicos, el orfismo, la asimilación cristiana), y, sobre todo, su tradición mítica y literaria (ecos literarios de los motivos órficos, Orfeo en la literatura española y Orfeo en Pavese, Süskind y Magris -que nos han legado unas reescrituras diferentes y originales de la historia). El estudio concluye con una bibliografía que no pretende ser exhaustiva, pero que contiene, además de las referencias bibliográficas citadas en el trabajo, los títulos de mayor relevancia referidos al mito de Orfeo y su recepción en la literatura posterior, especialmente en la de nuestro país. El artículo aparece salpicado con imágenes iconográficas que ilustran muy bien diversos aspectos abordados a lo largo del trabajo, de las que se seleccionan tres vasos griegos de figuras rojas del siglo V a.C. (dos representan la muerte del héroe y otro su cabeza cortada emitiendo oráculos), dos bajorrelieves de los siglos V-IV a.C. (Orfeo y Pitágoras entre animales y la conocida copia romana de Orfeo, Eurídice y Hermes), dos frescos de catacumbas (que aluden a la asimilación de Orfeo-Cristo -echamos en falta, porque representa muy bien este sincretismo, la reproducción del controvertido sello cilíndrico de hematita, desaparecido del Altes Museum durante la II Guerra Mundial, que mostraba a un ΟΡΦΕΟC ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟC crucificado) y una estatua tardorromana de Orfeo entre animales del siglo IV d.C. No se incluyen imágenes posteriores, a pesar de contar el mito con una larga tradición iconográfica con la que poder seguir ilustrando las otras páginas del volumen, sobre todo si queda alguna en blanco (173). Tan sólo debemos sumar, ya en color, la portada y la tarjeta-regalo que viene con el libro, obras del artista gráfico Max (autor de un cómic, Katábasis, y de varios grabados sobre el mítico héroe).

This article examines a work entitled Espejo de Chirurgia, written in 1631 by the surgeon Antonio de Viana, born in La Laguna (Tenerife‐Islas Canarias) in 1578. Even though the treatise was produced in the first half of the 17 th century, Viana's medical training helps explain why its characteristics are typical of Renaissance medical knowledge. The treatise is mainly theoretical and is essentially based on the principle of authority, especially in the works of Galen, and its most striking feature is the abundance of ancient, medieval and modern sources.

È opinione comune, presso gli studiosi moderni, che i giudici privati del processo civile romano (giudici monocratici o recuperatores) appartenessero alle classi sociali più elevate e più colte e che mantenessero, nel ricoprire il loro incarico, un atteggiamento di grande dignità. Questo dato appare in effetti confermato se si considerano tutti i giudici privati, dei quali le testimonianze antiche hanno tramandato l’identità. Ci sono tuttavia significative fonti letterarie, che presentano indizi dai quali è lecito sospettare, di fatto, l’esistenza di una seconda ‘categoria’ di giudici privati, costituita da persone di bassa estrazione sociale, che mantenevano spesso, nell'esercizio della funzione, comportamenti tutt’altro che incensurabili. I giudici di questo secondo gruppo erano, nella maggior parte dei casi, probabilmente quelli scelti al di fuori dell’album iudicum. Dall’indagine è risultato anche che, sebbene le due categorie di giudici fossero per molti aspetti differenziate tra loro, esse erano tuttavia assimilate per un importante carattere comune: l’imperitia iuris dei giudicanti, che si trova a più riprese lamentata dalle fonti antiche.

Why Bernardo Bertolucci, when adapting as a film Alberto Moravia’s novel Il conformista, introduced into its homonymous The Conformist the Platonic image of the cave? The article is to give an answer to this question by analysing Moravia’s work in search of “cave images”, which would justify Bertolucci’s decision.

If you want to contribute with an entry, please write to [email protected]

Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.

In this paper we propose a series of hypothesis on Martin Waldseemüller’s enigmatic cartographic representations of 1507, highlighting the connections between his cosmography and Copernican cosmology. The beginning of the conceptualization process regarding a “fourth part” of the world, which Waldseemüller called “America”, implied a thorough review of the philosophical speculations on the tradition related to the characteristics of the Earth. By covering 360° degrees, Waldseemüller world map doubled the Ptolemaic representation and encouraged the re-examination of the measurements of both the Earth and the universe. In turn, this strengthened the widespread idea of earth movement; two key issues in the development of Modern science. Furthermore, exploring the intersections between the work of Waldseemüller and Copernicus, will allow us to consider the typical achievements and contradictions of Renaissance science, to argue their peculiar way of understanding the discovery of new lands, and to determine the consequences of how information was processed.

It might seem paradoxical that such a materialist writer as Saramago takes advantage of the Platonic image of the cave. However,  the goal of Saramago's novel is precisely to illustrate the spiritual and mental darkness of our contemporary world. In spite, then, of Plato's ideocentric philosophy, which is certainly not followed by the Portuguese writer, his image can be reasonably used in order to defend a non metaphysical way of life, and this is not an obstacle to pay a sincere homage to the famous Athenian philosopher's images.

Recensione a P. Vidal-Naquet, Atlantide. Breve storia di un mito, Torino, Einaudi 2006 (trad. it. di Id., L’Atlantide. Petite histoire d’un mythe platonicienne, Paris, Les Belles Lettres 2005).
Recensione pubblicata in «RCCM» 50, 2, 2008, pp. 435-439.

Socrates’ serene attitude before his death –although this is questioned-, as described by Xenophon in his Apologia Socratis becomes for the playwright Rodolf Sirera a useful  reference in an effort to reflect boldly on the limits of theatrical fiction in another clear example of the Classical Tradition, including that derived from Baroque Tragedy. However, in this case, it is judged severely to make us more conscious of the risk of turning life into a mere theatrical performance and human beings into actors and actresses in a play they did not write.

Carlos García Gual: Sirenas. Seducciones y metamorfosis. Madrid, Turner Publicaciones, 2014, 204 páginas + 16 páginas ilustraciones. ISBN: 978-84-15832-29-4. Una de las grandes figuras españolas en el estudio de los mitos griegos es el profesor Carlos García Gual. Desde su manual Introducción a la mitología griega (Madrid, Alianza, 1992), su Diccionario de mitos (Barcelona, Planeta, 1997), su reciente Historia mínima de la mitología (Madrid, Turner, 2014) o sus estudios, en forma de artículos o libros, sobre Tiresias, Dioniso, Orfeo, Edipo o Prometeo, entre otros, dan constancia de este hecho, así como el merecidísimo homenaje en forma de libro que, editado por A. Pérez Jiménez, lleva por título Realidad, fantasía, interpretación, funciones y pervivencia del mito griego. Estudios en honor del profesor Carlos García Gual (Zaragoza, Libros Pórtico, 2014).

The eighteenth century was a critical period for the development of historical writing. Revolutions in archaeology, historical methodology and source criticism brought dramatic changes to our understandings of the ancient world. There were new debates about the value and purpose of history and new historical canons emerged that were to determine the nature of scholarly historical writing for more than a century. This volume examines these changes through an analysis of the nature of historical narrative, debates about sources, methods and material culture, and through the ‘political’ uses of history in eighteenth-century constitutional debate. The development of these understandings and approaches would become the defining feature of Enlightenment engagement with antiquity. Moreover, they would lay the foundations of the modern discipline of Ancient History. This is a book that challenges traditional accounts of historiographical development and highlights how the politics of scholarly culture have distorted views of the ancient past.

Paper deals with the historical story of the advent of Christianity. Examines what Christianity had to offer Rome during its war with the Jews (placation of slaves & the poor, promise of life after death & "reward", making soldiers unafraid to die, "comforting" dead soldier's family, etc.).

Can Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex really be transformed into a love story, as in Steven Berkoff’s drama entitled Greek? This article will show that, although Greek may be viewed by some critics as simply a provocative drama by no means intended to justify incest, directors, actors and critics in the end become enthralled by the powerful love story that ensues between Eddy and his wife and mother. This perspective reveals that Berkoff’s adaptation, intended to portray the social degradation of 1980s Great Britain, is in reality a quite risky proposition since it represents a flat denial of the tragic awareness of contemporary men and women. However, if this is the case, the audience, apart from enjoying the performance of Berkoff’s drama, might question, even from a non-fundamentalist perspective within the classical tradition, to what degree it makes sense to take inspiration from a text by Sophocles that precisely illustrates the great tragic awareness of the ancient Greeks.

Dans cet article, nous analyserons trois versions françaises médiévales versifiées du Physiologos ‒celles de Philippe de Thaün, Guillaume Le Clerc et Gervaise ‒ et la description et l'interprétation que chaque auteur fait de la licorne, l’un des animaux les plus importants de l'imaginaire médiéval. Notre étude visera à dévoiler les aspects que chaque texte conserve par rapport à l'original grec et les nouveautés que ceux-ci présentent dans les sections parlant de la licorne. Finalement, nous analyserons l'influence de ces bestiaires dans les littératures hispaniques du Moyen Âge.

Odysseus’ Scar and Erich Auerbach’s ‘Searchlight’ — Abstract

The first chapter of E. Auerbach’s Mimesis (“Odysseus’ scar”) is an impressive tour de force in which the great German philologist lays out the principles and the tools of his method. It is also a subtle piece of militant criticism, where the primacy of the Judaic tradition over classical culture is clearly advocated. This paper investigates some of the peculiarities of Auerbach’s anticlassical stance, which may even owe something to F. Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy.

The book is an attempt at a synthetic survey of the quickly growing stream of research in translation studies. Its focus on the classical languages is proposed as a shortcut to universality; up until the early nineteenth century, Latin and Greek were two of the central vehicles of translation activities.

The core of the survey deals with two predominant influences within this historical timeframe. The first is a tendency towards a free reconstruction of the author’s message, towards an adaptation of its language and culture to the audience in the target language, based on a conviction that the only way to understand the other is within a framework of what one already knows. This is opposed by the inclination towards translating the original as literally as possible and towards understanding the foreign text in its very foreignness. Both impulses may be traced through the history of translation in various cultures; the present analysis focuses on four periods in European history when one or the other was particularly dominant. The former was especially prevalent during the Roman antiquity and then again in the time of Neoclassicism; the latter prevailed with the rise of Christianity and once more during the era of Romanticism. 

The Romans competed with their originals and attempted to surpass them while transforming Latin into a refined, responsive and rich language. The arrival of Christianity precipitated a radical turn. Christian translators saw their original as inspired; its tidings of salvation had to be transmitted without unnecessary and arbitrary adornment, which called for an effort to translate the text as precisely as possible; a principle which also remained the norm during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A further revolution was later brought about by the “unfaithful beauties”, les belles infidèles, as translations with significant adjustments to both culture and taste of the audience were called in the period of Neoclassicism. They were in turn countered by Romantic theorists and their “foreignisation”, Verfremdung, a desire to transmit an image of the original and its cultural universe which would be as precise as possible. Both currents may in fact be understood as a part of a wider debate that centres on the problem of translatability.

The inquiry is accompanied by a collection of sources for translation history, first time in Slovenian translation, provided by the author: “Letter to Fuscus on the advantages of translating” by Pliny the Younger, “Letter to Pammachius on the best way of translating” by Saint Jerome, “Preface to translation of Saint John Chrysostom” by Burgundio of Pisa, “Letter on translating the New Testament” by Desiderius Erasmus, “Dedication of translation of Lucian” by Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, “Translations” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and “What is Translation,” a treatise by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. Each text comes from a different period; together they provide the reader with a point of departure for an independent approach to the problems of translation and their historical manifestations.

In Death in Venice Thomas Mann refers explicitly to Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus in order to explain the relationship between Gustav von Aschenbach and Tadzio but he hides that his novel also depends on Plutarch’s Eroticus. Why? The aim of this article is precisely to reveal the different reasons for such an attitude. Indeed, Plutarch speaks highly of conjugal love in his Eroticus and this way is not followed by Mann in Death in Venice but, at the same, the German writer finds in this Plutarch’s philosophical dialogue all the necessary elements to build his story of masculine love and decides not to manage without it.

In "Western Ways", for the first time, the "foreign schools" in Rome and Athens, institutions dealing primarily with classical archaeology and art history, are discussed in historical terms as vehicles and figureheads of national scholarship. By emphasising the agency and role of individuals in relation to structures and tradition, the book shows how much may be gained by examining science and politics as two sides of the same coin. It sheds light on the scholarly organisation of foreign schools, and through them, on the organisation of classical archaeology and classical studies around the Mediterranean. With its breadth and depth of archival resources, "Western Ways" offers new perspectives on funding, national prestige and international collaboration in the world of scholarship, and places the foreign schools in a framework of nineteenth and twentieth century Italian and Greek history.

Despite of the proliferation of studies about Ancient History and cinema during the last years, the cinematographic representation of the Roman Army has not been studied. But the historical films about Rome have been a genre closely linked with warfare, so the Roman army always has been a main element within these films. Through the analysis of some recent productions such as Centurion (Marshall, 2010) or Eagle of the Ninth (Macdonald, 2011) and classic films like Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960) or The fall of the Roman Empire (Mann, 1964), this article will try to review the level of historical veracity of the cinematographic representation of this army. Moreover, focusing on the reception phenomenon, it will be analysed what contemporary concerns reflect this representation.

Riassunto: Il contributo verte su tre signacula bronzei rinvenuti a Menorca e Mallorca. L'analisi paleografica ed onomastica così come considerazioni sul testo epigrafico in parte anche simbolico consentono nuove considerazioni circa l'ambito d'uso e la cronologia dei pezzi. Abstract: The contribution focuses on three bronze signacula from Menorca and Mallorca. The palaeographic and onomastics analysis as well as considerations on the epigraphic text partly symbolic allow new considerations about the scope of use and the chronology of the pieces.

"Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), ed. Jonatan Meir, Three volumes, Mosad Bialik, Jerusalem

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.


The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.


Contents

Volume 1  - Critical Edition

Concerning this edition
Key personalities
Sefer Megale Temirin – Critical Edition


Volume 2 - Appendixes:
1. Glossary, Abbreviations, Acronyms
2. Explanation of the Speaking Names
3. Perl’s Hasidic Sources
4. Manuscripts of Sefer Megale Temirin
5. Yiddish Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin
Bibliographic Abbreviations

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Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) https://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog https://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) https://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  https://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl Blog, https://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/