Emergence of Early Yiddish Literature

<p>While much early Yiddish literature belonged to pious genres quasi-secular genres--epic drama and lyric--also developed. Jerold Frakes contends that the historical context of the emergence of Yiddish literature is an essential factor in any understanding of its cultural relevance in a time and place where Jewish life was defined by expulsions massacres and discriminatory legislation that profoundly altered European Judaism and shook the very foundations of traditional Jewish society.</p>