Anamarija VARGOVIC

This doctoral project in Hebrew and comparative literature aims to study the treatment of, and the expansion upon, the Biblical episodes of Athaliah and Judith in two dramatic works. Composed by the 18th century Dutch Hebrew-language poet David Franco Mendes, the texts we have selected to examine (Gmul Athaliah and Teshuat Israel Bidei Yehudit) are built upon the works of Racine and Metastasio. We shall like to examine each author’s adaptation of the source material to suit his purpose and context. We shall then like to study, more narrowly, Franco Mendes’ literary and linguistic choices as he was re-elaborating and translating the work of his predecessors. By doing so, we shall like to reflect upon the sustained dialogue both with the Jewish textual tradition and with the modern European literature.