HTR 97:4 (2004) 461–84 Transforming the Maimonidean Imagination: Aesthetics in the Renaissance Thought of Judah Abravanel * Aaron W. Hughes University of Calgary ■ Introduction The life and work of Judah Abravanel (ca. 1460–after 1523) are at such odds with each other that one wonders how such an important and optimistic Renais- sance treatise could have been produced by such a tragic figure. 1 Although his life was markedby peregrinations and uncertainties, 2 all of whichwere due to his * I would like to acknowledge the comments of Professors Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Daniel H. Frank, and Oliver N. Leaman on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to the very construc- tive reviews offered by two readers for HTR. When citing Judah Abravanel’s Dialoghi d’Amore, I give the page number of the standard Italian edition of Santino Caramella (Bari: Laterza and Figli, 1929) followedby, in parentheses, the corresponding page number in the English translation of F. Friedeberg-Seeley and Jean H. Barnes, The Philosophy of Love (Dialoghi d’Amore) (London: Soncino Press, 1937). This translation is somewhat outdated, especially in terms ofits unwillingness to capture the erotic nature of Judah’s Italian. For a more recent critical edition of the Italian text, see Giacinto Manuppella, Dialoghi d’amore (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigaçao Cientifica, 1983). 1 For requisite biographical material, see Menachem Dorman, “Judah Abravanel: His Life and Work” (in Hebrew), in Sichot >al ha- <Ahavah: Leone Ebreo (Giuda Abrabanel) < (ed. and trans. Menachem Dorman; Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1983) 13–95; other treatments include B. Zimmels, Leo Hebreus (Breslau: n.p., 1886); S. H. Margulies, “La famiglia Abravanel in Italia,” Rivista israelitica 3 (1906) 97–107, 147–54; Heinz Pflaum, Die Idee der Liebe Leone Ebreo: Zwei Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie in der Renaissance (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1926) 55–85; Carl Gebhardt, Leone Ebreo (Heidelberg: n.p., 1929); and A. R. Milburn, “Leone Ebreo and the Renaissance,” in Isaac Abravanel: Six Lectures (ed. J. B. Trend and H. Loewe; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937) 133–57. 2 See, for example, the poem “Telunah >al ha-zeman” in Mivhar ha-Shirah ha->Ivrit be- <Italyah