The Golden Way: The Hebrew Sonnet during the Renaissance and the Baroque
This ground-breaking and much acclaimed study by Professor Dvora Bregman appeared in Hebrew in 1995. It follows the history of the Hebrew sonnet from its first appearance around 1300 in Italy — close to the time of the first sonnets in Italian — to its subsequent development throughout Europe and the Turkish Empire. Now translated into English, The Golden Way leads the reader into the fascinating and hitherto little known world of the Hebrew sonnet and the poets who cultivated it.
Reviews
The present volume contains a profusion of riches in content, form, and literary contexts, all derived from the study of this one small form, “whose weight is golden.” This definition of the Hebrew sonnet is found in the first theoretical Hebrew treatise on the sonnet written by Shmuel Archevolti, one of the pioneers of the sonnet’s renewal.
— Yoram Bronovsky, Ha-Aretz
The thorough analysis of the first four hundred years of Hebrew sonnet writing in The Golden Way makes available a large body of poetry, mostly unknown, that has long awaited systematic study. The origins, elaborations, and applications of the genre delineate an epoch of literary history, each example of which is now comprehensible as an expression of the thought, beliefs, social practices, and cross-cultural relations of particular authors and audiences. This book establishes communication between the historical sensibility and our own, an essential task of literary scholarship.
— Arthur M. Lesley, Baltimore Hebrew University
