Words on Fire: the Unfinished Story of Yiddish

New York: Basic Books, 2004. First edition, first printing (full number line). Hardcover. Very fine in fine jacket; as new. See photos. in new dust-jacket. Quarto in creme color illus jacket; xvi, 430 pages: illustrations, maps; 24 cm; bibliographical references and index. "From its ancient roots in Hebrew and Aramaic, to its development as the common language of Jews in medieval Europe, and its blossoming as a language of literature, scholarship and a lively press in the nineteenth century, the story of Yiddish mirrors the history of the Jewish people in Europe and beyond. In Words on Fire, leading Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz recounts the sweeping history of this evocative and multifaceted language. Drawing on thirty years of research, Words on Fire traces the steps of a language once derided as "jargon" and identified with women and uneducated men from medieval times onward, and relates how efforts to raise its prestige were often met by opposition from the powers that be. Katz highlights the rise of literary Yiddish in the Renaissance-widely-read translations of knightly epic poems and guides for daily living-particularly by and for Jewish women. In the wake of secularizing and modernizing movements of the nineteenth century, Yiddish rose spectacularly in a few short years from a mass folk idiom to the language of sophisticated modern literature, theater, journalism, and scholarship." -Publisher. / Contents: Genesis -- The three languages of Ashkenaz -- Old Yiddish literature -- What should a lady read -- Yiddish and Kabbalah -- In the East -- Westernization and language -- New visions of Judaism -- The twentieth century -- In the twenty-first century -- The future of Yiddish. // Yiddish (Langue) -- Histoire. Yiddish language. Jiddisch Jiddisch. Cultuurgeschiedenis. Geschichte.