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Brings together 16 scholars who investigate the many facets of what could be referred to as Jewish theatre: they interpret its dramas, analyze its practices, explore its factors and effects, and revisit some of the established knowledge in the light of new theory.

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This book, dedicated to the theme of folly in the northern Renaissance, sheds light for the first time on issues that are essential for a comprehensive understanding of the mentalities, as well as the literary and visual manifestations that characterize the rendering of Folly in the northern Renaissance, particularly in view of the late medieval heritage. The theme of folly in the Middle Ages and the northern Renaissance has mainly been studied from literary and social historical perspectives. The fool's conflicted position in both social and symbolic realms has been defined thusly:, while embodying human folly and the entire society of sinners, he at the same time, also assumes the position of the wise outsider who points out the culpability of the 'other' fools. The place of the fool in northern late medieval and Renaissance drama, notably in the s'ottie and morality plays and on the rhetorician's stage, has been widely discussed. The fool's position as the incarnation of revolt against the well established social order has been studied from various points of view, mainly from historical, sociological and folkloric perspectives. Discussion of the fool in the context of the art of the northern Renaissance remains, however, inadequate. In the field of iconography and visual interpretation of the theme, no comprehensive study has been published to date. In the northern Renaissance the theme of folly occupies a central place in both literary and visual cultures. The idea of folly, haunted the late fifteenth-century imagination. This generation's fears and anxieties were now channeled into an obsession with Folly that inherited the exclusive position that, until then, had been held by the terrifying medieval image of Death. Indeed, this age witnesses the creation of a new myth in which the image of follv mirrors the troubled world-picture.

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The relationship between medieval animal symbolism and the iconography of animals in the Renaissance has scarcely been studied. Filling a gap in this significant field of Renaissance culture, in general, and its art, in particular, this book demonstrates the continuity and tenacity of medieval animal interpretations and symbolism, disguised under the veil of genre, religious or mythological narrative and scientific naturalism. An extensive introduction, dealing with relevant medieval and early Renaissance sources, is followed by a series of case studies that illustrate ways in which Renaissance artists revived conventional animal imagery in unprecedented contexts, investing them with new meanings, on a social, political, ethical, religious or psychological level, often by applying exegetical methodology in creating multiple semantic and iconographic levels.

Simona Cohen, Ph.D. in Art History (1982), Tel-Aviv University, is a Senior Lecturer there. She has published extensively on problems of Renaissance iconography, Venetian art and animal symbolism. Indian Art History is her second academic field of research and teaching.