Rewriting Russia : Jacob Gordin's Yiddish drama / Barbara Henry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Henry, Barbara J., 1965-

Series:

A Samuel and Althea Stroum book

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yiddish drama--History and criticism.

Yiddish drama.

Gordin, Jacob, 1853-1909--Criticism and interpretation.

Gordin, Jacob.

Physical Description:

xiv, 229 p. : ports.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Jacob Gordin was the first major playwright of the "Golden Age" of New York's Yiddish theater, which was not just entertainment but also a public forum, a force for education and acculturation, and a battleground for ideologies and artistic credos. Gordin, like his audience, was a Russian émigré. His most successful and scandalous dramas--The Jewish King Lear, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Khasye the Orphan--were based on works by Lev Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, and reflected a profoundly Jewish means of using literature to salvage a lost land.Gordin's life and his plays held out the tantalizing possibility that by changing the story of one's past, one could write one's own future. Through a detailed examination of Gordin's career in Russia, Barbara Henry dismantles the fictive radical background he invented for himself. In doing so, she illuminates the continuities among his Russian fiction and journalism, his work as a controversial Jewish religious reformer, and his Yiddish plays.

Contents:

Amerika

In the old country: The reformer

A Russian writer

The perils of performance: Di Kreytser Sonata

Don't look back: Orphan in the underworld

Homecoming.

Notes:

"A Samuel and Althea Stroum book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9780295801476

0295801476

OCLC:

772528537