Leon Jacobowitz Efron
Currently Lecturer of History at Shalem College - Jerusalem, Israel; was Visiting Lecturer of Medieval History at Achva College of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. My dissertation on the religious reception of Dante Alighieri was written at Tel-Aviv University’s School for Historical Studies, under the supervision of Dr. Yossef Schwartz (TAU) and Prof. Peter S. Hawkins (Yale). It won Tel-Aviv University’s Funkenstein Award for Outstanding and Original Ph.D. Dissertation.
I was research fellow at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. I also won the Lady Davis Fellowship for 2013, and the Rothschild Fellowship that enabled my to write at Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), Florence, in 2013-14.
Presently I am working on a monograph about the popular image of Dante as a theologian.
I am interested in late medieval and early modern secular-vernacular thought, and have a particular interest in questions of authority and specifically in lay subversion of ecclesiastic authority in 14th and 15th century texts and art.
I am also studying the development and cultural significance of mnemonics in the Middle Ages (the Art of Memory), and gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages (particularly on the gap between representation in "popular" sources and representation in legal/learned sources).
Supervisors: Yossef Schwartz and Peter S. Hawkins
I was research fellow at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. I also won the Lady Davis Fellowship for 2013, and the Rothschild Fellowship that enabled my to write at Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), Florence, in 2013-14.
Presently I am working on a monograph about the popular image of Dante as a theologian.
I am interested in late medieval and early modern secular-vernacular thought, and have a particular interest in questions of authority and specifically in lay subversion of ecclesiastic authority in 14th and 15th century texts and art.
I am also studying the development and cultural significance of mnemonics in the Middle Ages (the Art of Memory), and gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages (particularly on the gap between representation in "popular" sources and representation in legal/learned sources).
Supervisors: Yossef Schwartz and Peter S. Hawkins
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Papers by Leon Jacobowitz Efron
The following article analyzes how this unique text recasts the traditional classical narrative of Oedipus into a medieval monotheistic framework, its indebtedness to the French medieval narratives of the Roman d’Edipus (13th century) and the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César (written between 1208-1213), and its own seemingly original additions and their possible foundations. It also explores how the author-compiler used Gersonides’s commentary on the Bible as an excuse for writing on such a seemingly secular topic. Finally, it provides the first full transcription of the manuscript text and its first English translation.
"Dante’s Divine Comedy was one of the most influential texts in late medieval Italian society. This article seeks to open a window into how late medieval Italians understood gender, sex and sexuality, by analyzing their understanding and use of the term ‘hermaphrodite’ in commentaries to Purgatorio 26, and to Inferno 20. The commentary tradition on Dante’s Comedy reveals to be not only a wonderful archive recording the existence of ‘queer’ medieval individuals via the anecdotes provided by commentators, but also a valuable documentation of the prejudices, beliefs and opinions medieval Italians had on non-normative sexual behaviours and physicalities. Early commentaries seem to chaotically conflate distinctions of sex, gender and sexuality, attributing to hermaphroditism anatomical features, gender bending and outrageous sexual behaviour, including incest and bestiality. By referring to some scientific, theological and literary works available to the early commentators, however, the article shows that these seemingly peculiar interpretations were not arbitrary, but were rather the outcome of a different thought process, based on a different epistemological vocabulary and on different cultural references - a thought process which made these commentaries arrive at categories alien to us, but not without their own kind of reasoning behind them."
Conference Presentations by Leon Jacobowitz Efron
Talks by Leon Jacobowitz Efron
ד”ר חגי בועז עורך האוניברסיטה המשודרת
פרופ’ ליאו קורי, ראש ביה”ס להיסטוריה באוניברסיטת ת”א, ידבר על דנטה וחורחה לואיס בורחס
ליאון יעקובוביץ' עפרון
האירוע יתקיים ביום ראשון 4 בינואר 2015
בשעה 19:30
בתולעת ספרים
רח' מזא"ה 7 תל-אביב
הכניסה חופשית!
In this forthcoming paper I will present an original find: the identification of the Pistoian "Cappella del Giudizio's" western fragments to be part of a larger depiction of Dante’s Inferno. It will also show the fresco closely follows Nardo di Cione’s cycle from the Cappella Strozzi di Mantova in Florence. Thus validating Dante’s imaginative portrayal of the afterlife was reproduced visually outside of Florence. The paper will also present my findings regarding the historical context that may have facilitated this choice to render the Strozzi fresco.
The paper dealt with my latest finds on how 14th and 15th century Italians used Dante, his writings and writings attributed to him in their religious practices.
The following article analyzes how this unique text recasts the traditional classical narrative of Oedipus into a medieval monotheistic framework, its indebtedness to the French medieval narratives of the Roman d’Edipus (13th century) and the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César (written between 1208-1213), and its own seemingly original additions and their possible foundations. It also explores how the author-compiler used Gersonides’s commentary on the Bible as an excuse for writing on such a seemingly secular topic. Finally, it provides the first full transcription of the manuscript text and its first English translation.
"Dante’s Divine Comedy was one of the most influential texts in late medieval Italian society. This article seeks to open a window into how late medieval Italians understood gender, sex and sexuality, by analyzing their understanding and use of the term ‘hermaphrodite’ in commentaries to Purgatorio 26, and to Inferno 20. The commentary tradition on Dante’s Comedy reveals to be not only a wonderful archive recording the existence of ‘queer’ medieval individuals via the anecdotes provided by commentators, but also a valuable documentation of the prejudices, beliefs and opinions medieval Italians had on non-normative sexual behaviours and physicalities. Early commentaries seem to chaotically conflate distinctions of sex, gender and sexuality, attributing to hermaphroditism anatomical features, gender bending and outrageous sexual behaviour, including incest and bestiality. By referring to some scientific, theological and literary works available to the early commentators, however, the article shows that these seemingly peculiar interpretations were not arbitrary, but were rather the outcome of a different thought process, based on a different epistemological vocabulary and on different cultural references - a thought process which made these commentaries arrive at categories alien to us, but not without their own kind of reasoning behind them."
ד”ר חגי בועז עורך האוניברסיטה המשודרת
פרופ’ ליאו קורי, ראש ביה”ס להיסטוריה באוניברסיטת ת”א, ידבר על דנטה וחורחה לואיס בורחס
ליאון יעקובוביץ' עפרון
האירוע יתקיים ביום ראשון 4 בינואר 2015
בשעה 19:30
בתולעת ספרים
רח' מזא"ה 7 תל-אביב
הכניסה חופשית!
In this forthcoming paper I will present an original find: the identification of the Pistoian "Cappella del Giudizio's" western fragments to be part of a larger depiction of Dante’s Inferno. It will also show the fresco closely follows Nardo di Cione’s cycle from the Cappella Strozzi di Mantova in Florence. Thus validating Dante’s imaginative portrayal of the afterlife was reproduced visually outside of Florence. The paper will also present my findings regarding the historical context that may have facilitated this choice to render the Strozzi fresco.
The paper dealt with my latest finds on how 14th and 15th century Italians used Dante, his writings and writings attributed to him in their religious practices.