Elia Levita Bachur's Bovo-Buch: A Translation of the Old Yiddish Edition of 1541 with Introduction and Notes

Elia Levita Bachur's Bovo-Buch is a sixteenth-century Yiddish verse romance which relates the adventures of the hero Bovo d'Antona. The poet spins an episodic tale of friendship and betrayal, of disguise and discovery, of knightly battles, of journeys to exotic lands, of love lost and regained, of a slain father avenged, and of a hero restored to his patrimony. This romance, first composed in 1507, soon became one of the most popular works of Jewish secular literature and remained so over the next five hundred years. Professor Smith's prose translation makes this remarkable little book accessible to the English-speaking public for the first time.