Homer, humanism, Holocaust : Jewish responses to the crisis of enlightenment during World War II / Adam J. Goldwyn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldwyn, Adam J., author.

Series:

Palgrave pivot

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Philosophy.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Jews--Intellectual life--20th century.

Jews.

World War, 1939-1945--Literature and the war.

World War, 1939-1945.

Literature and humanism.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Jews--Intellectual life.

Philosophy.

War and literature.

Homer--Influence.

Homer.

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Informational works.

Physical Description:

xi, 150 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]

Summary:

This book examines how Jewish intellectuals during and after the Second World War reinterpreted Homers epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in light of their own wartime experiences, drawing a parallel between the ancient Greek genocide of the Trojans and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The wartime writings of Theodore Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, Rachel Bespaloff, Hermann Broch, Max Horkheimer, Primo Levi, and others were attempts both to understand the collapse of European civilization and the Enlightenment through critiques of their foundational texts and to imagine the place of the Homeric epics in a new post-War humanism. The book thus also explores the reception of these writers, analyzing how Jewish child-survivors like Geoffrey Hartman and Helene Cixous and writers of the post-Holocaust generation like Daniel Mendelsohn continued to read the epics as narratives of grief, trauma, and woundedness into the twenty-first century.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Homer, Humanism, and the Jews on the Cusp of World War II

2. Nihilism, Thoughtlessness, and the Bourgeois Odysseus: Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and the Failure of Enlightenment Humanism

3. Reflections on a Damaged Life: Hermann Broch's Mythical Method and Rachel BespalofPs On the Iliad

4. Odysseus' (Memory) Scar: Geoffrey Hartman's and Erich Auerbach's Readings of Homer Through the Holocaust

5. Helene Cixous' and Daniel Mendelsohn's Postmemory Scars: The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

3031114728

9783031114724

OCLC:

1330405240

Publisher Number:

99992230158