Two Medieval Hebrew devotional poems convention, evaluation, and "platonic" vs "metaphysical" poetry.

"There is a kind of academic critic who considers it his duty to approve of everything, however inferior, provided it was produced in the past, and who will spend much patient labor editing and historically justifying a bad eighteenth century versifier whereas he would turn with contempt from his modern equivalent." This description by David Daiches (266) suits the prevalent practice in the scholarship of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry exceptionally well. The rules of the game are something like this: one may praise an outstanding poet as superior to others, but may not mention that the other poets were inferior. The following paragraph by the greatest scholar of the field Yefim ...