The State of Women and Tophet and Eden

Rebecca Clay

University of Texas at Dallas

Proposal Title: The State of Women and Tophet and Eden

Abstract:

The question to be answered is how does Tophet and Eden reflect the state of women who were Italian Jews during the Middle Ages? I expect it will show us in what ways the rise of the Roman Catholic Church affected Italian Jewish women and their faith. Italian Jews coexisted with the Catholics, and Dante and Immanuel ben Solomon were good enough friends for Immanuel ben Solomon to imitate Dante’s work. The scriptures protected women but from the poem I theorize the type of sins Immanuel ben Solomon described in his poem in Canto X existed in that society to the point that he considered his writing a wake-up call to followers. Putting in hell those who violated women in the poem showed supernatural justice for women who were hurt on earth without prosecution of the guilty parties. Did those women have retribution for violations against them according to the scriptures?

I presented and published a paper at the International Association of Interdisciplinary Studies in 2015. I presented a short story at the Southwest Popular Culture Conference in February 2016, and I presented a short story at the SCMLA in November 2016. I will chair one of the eleven short story panels and present a short story at the Southwest Popular Culture Conference in February 2017. I will be the secretary of the Irish Literature panel at the SCMLA in November 2017.