Translation, Transgression, and Transformation: Animal Encounters in Old Yiddish

The paper will examine two anonymous Yiddish adaptations of German tales, which were produced during the first half of the eighteenth century—the 1735 translation of Eulenspiegel and the ~1714 Yiddish adaptation of the tale of the princess and the geese, made famous centuries later by Hans Christian Andersen. Both translations depict unusual encounters between humans and animals that transgress the human-animal divide, and convey an intense preoccupation with problems of contested borders and confused hierarchies.

The paper will offer a close reading of these animal encounters, attempting to untangle the complex discursive web of which these tales form a part, and which connects notions of humanity and animality with those of class, gender, and sexuality. I will argue that by testing and transgressing the borders of the human, such animal encounters help to unpack concerns surrounding the stability of social, cultural, and religious hierarchies. I will furthermore locate these concerns against their wider cultural background, and trace their unique manifestations within the Jewish—and particularly Yiddish—literary realm. I will argue that there was something special about Yiddish translations, which invited such preoccupation with problems of hybridity and transformation. A hybrid genre, formed by the unnatural coupling of separate tongues, literatures, cultures, classes, and genders—Yiddish literature was a potentially monstrous creation in its own right—an almost natural breeding ground for monsters.