The love poetry of Shelomoh ben Reuben Bonafed: Hebrew poems and courtly love

Abstract

This essay explores the extant love poetry in the diwān of Shelomoh Bonafed, one of the most important poets in the first half of the fifteenth century in Aragón, working to place his writing in its broader literary context beyond its obvious connections with earlier Andalusi tradition. As part of this context, it considers Bonafed's Hebrew texts in relation to the surrounding Romance literatures of the period, above all those produced in Aragón around his lifetime. By examining Bonafed's concept of love and the imagery and poetic structures that he uses to represent it, it locates his poems within the unique literary context of the first half of the fifteenth century. Through a detailed consideration of his little-known love poems, this study maintains that Bonafed revived classical models and reworked them in order to construct and convey the cultural identity of a Jewish elite that continually redefined itself against the majority Christian society on the one hand and against the swelling converso population on the other.