From continuity to contiguity : toward a new Jewish literary thinking / Dan Miron.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miron, Dan.

Series:

Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jewish literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Jewish literature.

Jewish literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Hebrew literature, Modern--History and criticism.

Hebrew literature, Modern.

Yiddish literature--History and criticism.

Yiddish literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xiv, 543 pages ; 24 cm.

regular print

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [2010]

Summary:

""This is a truly outstanding work of literary criticism that will set a new agenda for the discussion of Jewish literature. The distillation of many years of his work, this book is genuine Miron, with his encyclopedic erudition sharp intellect, and powerful conceptual synthesis."--Mikhail Krutikov, University of Michigan.

Dan Miron--widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on modern Jewish literatures--begins this study by surveying and critiquing previous attempts to define a common denominator unifying the various modern Jewish literatures. He argues that these prior efforts have all been trapped in theoretical and historical impasses created by the need to see these literatures as a continuum. By contrast, Miron seeks to break through these impasses by acknowledging discontinuity as the staple characteristic of modern Jewish writing. He suggests that these literatures form a complex of independent, yet touching, components, in contact through relationships of contiguity. Approaching the topic in this fashion, he is able to offer an important set of original insights into modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literatures and the literary thinking that each of them produced.

From Continuity to Contiguity contains an entirely new interpretation of Franz Kafka's place within the world of modern Jewish literatures, along with discussions of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Achad halam, M.Y. Berditshevsky, H.N. Bialik, and Y.I. Peretz, among others. The book sheds new light on Jewish diglossias and shows how these modern Jewish literatures should be viewed against the background of the destruction of eastern European Jewry, the establishment of an independent Jewish state, and the flourishing of Jewish creativity in the West."--Jacket.

Contents:

Prologue : Old questions; Do they deserve new answers?

The "old" Jewish literary discourse and the illusion of Israeli cultural normalcy

Modern Jewish literary thinking : the enlightenment and the advent of nationalism

The Jewish literary renaissance at the turn of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries

The inter-bellum decades : Hebrew

The inter-bellum decades : Yiddish; issues of cultural continuity in revolutionary times

Vertical and horizontal continuities and discontinuities

Dov Sadan's concept of sifrut yisrael, and why the "old" Jewish literary discourse became irrelevant

Jewish diglossias, differential and integral

Contiguity : Franz Kafka's standing within the modern Jewish literary complex

Contiguity : how Kafka and Sholem Aleichem are contiguous

Conclusion : toward a new Jewish literary thinking

Breathing through both nostrils? Shalom Yaakov Abramovitsh between Hebrew and Yiddish.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 499-530) and index.

National Jewish Book Awards - Scholarship, Winner, 2010

ISBN:

9780804762007

0804762007

OCLC:

439210523

Publisher Number:

40018221785

99938863177