The B'rith of Tragedy: Jewish Roots of a Stolen Genre in Early Modern Europe.

  • Published In: Journal of the History of Ideas, 2026, v. 87, n. 1. P. 1 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Lazarus, Micha 3 of 3

Abstract

At opposite ends of Reformation Europe, Martin Luther and the Italian Jewish theatre director Leone de' Sommi both declare that the Jews invented tragedy and the Greeks took the credit. How to explain this unlikely alliance over a still unlikelier account of literary history? De' Sommi was asserting the value of Jewish culture; Luther was mounting a complex argument against the Catholic canon. De' Sommi's sources were Talmudic, Luther's patristic. Across geography, chronology, and faith, tragedy served as a contested borderland, in which to probe the boundaries between history and fiction, scripture and apocrypha, pagan, Jew, and Christian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:Journal of the History of Ideas. 2026/01, Vol. 87, Issue 1, p1
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Literature and Writing
  • Publication Date:2026
  • ISSN:0022-5037
  • DOI:10.1353/jhi.2026.a982618
  • Accession Number:191725847
  • Copyright Statement:Copyright of Journal of the History of Ideas is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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