Poem, Panegyric, and Tokens of Appreciation

התמורה בעבור שיר שבח בכמה עולמות בימי הביניים

Abstract

Poetry is first of all a testimony for the ways of poetry. But medieval poetry is also a testimony about the uses of poetry, especially in a courtly world where panegyrics were in highest esteem and were at least in part written in aspiration for the favor of the eulogized. Thus panegyrics had to be on the one hand enough poetry to be a contribution of art in a political and material social setting, but on the other hand a clear enough expression of the poet's material expectations. From the early eleventh century in the Arabic hemisphere to the thirteenth century in the Christian world, Hebrew secular poetry reflects the important transition of feudal societies around the Mediterranean from gift economics to a commodity money economy. While Andalusi courtly poetry shows from its very beginnings a clear tendency to abstract metaphors like dew and rain drops in praise of the panegyric's addressee, its continuations in Christian Europe reflect the fact that courtly life there continued according to the norms of gift economics for at least two more centuries, as contemporary poetry in other languages also attests.