The marriage plot : or how Jews fell in love with love, and literature / Naomi Seidman. / Naomi Seidman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seidman, Naomi, author.

Series:

Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture.

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Jewish literature.

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

Jewish marriage customs and rites--History.

Jewish marriage customs and rites.

Marriage customs and rites in literature.

Love in literature.

Sex in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

For nineteenth-century Eastern European Jews, modernization entailed the abandonment of arranged marriage in favor of the "love match." Romantic novels taught Jewish readers the rules of romance and the choreography of courtship. But because these new conceptions of romance were rooted in the Christian and chivalric traditions, the Jewish embrace of "the love religion" was always partial. In The Marriage Plot, Naomi Seidman considers the evolution of Jewish love and marriage though the literature that provided Jews with a sentimental education, highlighting a persistent ambivalence in the Jewish adoption of European romantic ideologies. Nineteenth-century Hebrew and Yiddish literature tempered romantic love with the claims of family and community, and treated the rules of gender complementarity as comedic fodder. Twentieth-century Jewish writers turned back to tradition, finding pleasures in matchmaking, intergenerational ties, and sexual segregation. In the modern Jewish voices of Sigmund Freud, Erica Jong, Philip Roth, and Tony Kushner, the Jewish heretical challenge to the European romantic sublime has become the central sexual ideology of our time.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Plotting Jewish Marriage

1. A Sentimental Education

2. Matchmaking and Modernity

3. Pride and Pedigree

4. The Choreography of Courtship

5. In-Laws and Outlaws

6. Sex and Segregation

Afterword: After Marriage

Notes

Index

STANFORD STUDIES IN JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780804799621

0804799628

OCLC:

952247938