The Rose of Thirteen Petals and the Pomegranate Tree & Literary Evocations of the Zohar in Contemporary Fiction

This dissertation explores the role of the Zohar as an ever-relevant source of inspiration and as a model for the representation of the mystical experience in contemporary works of literary fiction. The creative component consists of a novel narrating a young aspiring poet and literature scholar’s quest to acquire Spanish citizenship in order to gain access to the Royal Spanish Archives. The critical component places the Zohar in the context of medieval Iberian literature in order to establish its nature as a fictional literary work, while examining the possibility of the mystical novel inspired by the Zohar.