A YIDDISH CABINET OF CURIOSITIES: GLILES ERETS YISROEL AND THE EARLY MODERN AFTERLIFE OF THE MEDIEVAL HEBREW TRAVEL BOOK

This is a first comprehensive analysis of "Gliles Eretz Yisroel", a popular early modern Yiddish travel narrative which, contrary to its author's statements, is a composite of earlier works. It demonstrates what happens on a literary level when a travel book is not the product of travel but of a pre-existing library, and suggests that the resulting reading experience was also a new and different one. It also shows how a work can be both very conservative in its use of sources, and very unruly in how it uses them.