Baumgarten Jean. Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. — 480 p.The field of early Yiddish studies has so far only been accessible to specialist scholars. This remarkable study opens up to a more general audience the cultural richness of that broad and deep corpus of literature that stretches from its beginnings in the Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth century. The literature spans a wide spectrum of genres, from love lyric to kabbalistic treatises, and from travelogue to Renaissance adventure epic. The diverse world of Ashkenazic Jewry comes alive in this survey of its literature.The Invention of a Language: Yiddish among the European Vernaculars
The Emergence of Yiddish Literature and the Crisis in Jewish Society
The Printing, Distribution, and Audience of Yiddish Books
Bilingualism and the Development of Old Yiddish Literature
Yiddish Bibles
Medieval Epic and Romance in Yiddish
Elia Levita and the Romanzo Cavalleresco
Books of Morality and Conduct
Ethico-Mystical Treatises in Yiddish
The Books of Custom and Conduct: Minhogim sforim
Prayer in the Vernacular
Tkhinous ‘Prayers of Supplication’
Yiddish and Bilingual Rites of Daily Prayer (siddurim) and Holiday Prayers (makhzourim)
Yiddish Narrative
Terrestrial Suffering in a Topsy-Turvy World
Megilas Vints: An Historical Poem on the Pogrom in Frankfurt am Main in 1616
Yiddish Medical Texts (Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
Purim-shpil and the Jewish Carnivalesque Tradition