"Rhymes So Good the Likes of Which Have Not Been Seen in all the Land of Spain": Meir of Norwich and Friendship Poetry

Abstract:This short essay explores Susan Einbinder's observation that the poetics of the medieval Anglo-Jewish poet Meir of Norwich show a unique mix of borrowing from the poetic schools of both Ashkenaz and Sepharad. Boyarin argues that Meir was discursively creating a school of Anglo-Hebrew poetics, one that he imagined drew from both of these established schools. Focused on two linked poems dedicated to an anonymous benefactor, this essay shows how Meir used a specific genre of poetry—the friendship poem—that was at the heart of the medieval Hispano-Hebrew poetic school and argues that Meir was constructing a (perhaps aspirational) English parallel.