On the margins of modernism : decentering literary dynamics / Chana Kronfeld.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kronfeld, Chana.

Series:

Contraversions ; 2.

Contraversions ; 2

Language:

English

Hebrew

Subjects (All):

Hebrew poetry, Modern--History and criticism.

Hebrew poetry, Modern.

Yiddish poetry--History and criticism.

Yiddish poetry.

Marginality, Social, in literature.

Physical Description:

xvi, 294 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [1996]

Summary:

Modernism valorizes the marginal, the exile, the "other." Yet the representative examples of this marginality are typically those writers who have since become the most canonical and who composed in the most commonly read European languages: English, French, and German. Kronfeld counters dominant models of marginality by taking up instead the case of modernist poetry written in two decentered languages, Hebrew and Yiddish. These examples allow her to posit a new model of literary dynamics, one less tied to canonical norms, less limited geographically, less positivistic, and less in danger of universalizing the experience of minority writers.

Kronfeld examines the fluid interpenetrations of modernist groupings through examples of Hebrew and Yiddish poetry in Europe, the United States, and Israel. She provides extended discussions of poets Amichai, Fogel, Raab, Halpern, Markish, Hofshteyn, and Sutskever, among others. Her book will be essential reading for all those interested in the dynamics of literary and linguistic production, as well as for students of modernism in general and Hebrew and Yiddish literatures in particular.

Contents:

Introduction: Minor Modernisms: Beyond Deleuze and Guattari 1

Part 1 Modeling Modernism

1 Modernism through the Margins: From Definitions to Prototypes 21

2 Theory/History: Between Period and Genre; Or, What to Do with a Literary Trend? 35

3 Behind the Graph and the Map: Literary Historiography and the Hebrew Margins of Modernism 57

Part 2 Stylistic Prototypes

4 Beyond Language Pangs: The Possibility of Modernist Hebrew Poetry 81

5 Theories of Allusion and Imagist Intertextuality: When Iconoclasts Evoke the Bible 114

Part 3 Paragons from the Periphery

6 Yehuda Amichai: On the Boundaries of Affiliation 143

7 David Fogel and Moyshe Leyb Halpern: Liminal Moments in Hebrew and Yiddish Literary History 159

8 The Yiddish Poem Itself: Readings in Halpern, Markish, Hofshteyn, and Sutzkever 194

Conclusion: Marginal Prototypes, Prototypical Margins 225.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-283) and index.

ISBN:

0520083466

0520083474

OCLC:

34192809