Abstract

Scholarship treating Andalusian Hebrew literature has generally approached poems depicting natural settings as "nature poetry" without considering "landscape" as a distinct literary topic. This article reconsiders this body of literature from the perspective of landscape, focusing on the associations between garden, desert, and forest and cultural meanings. In particular, the contrast between the garden and its counterpoints in desert and forest is linked with a poetics of estrangement and nostalgia that arose with the displacement of Andalusian Jewish intellectuals following the Almoravid conquest (c. 1090). As Islamic Iberia began to fade into memory, the garden emerged as an icon of Andalusian culture, while the desert and forest represented landscapes of exile, each bearing specific cultural connotations.

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