City Scriptures : Modern Jewish Writing / Murray Baumgarten.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baumgarten, Murray, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Jewish authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

Judaism and literature--United States--History.

Judaism and literature.

Yiddish language--Influence on foreign languages.

Yiddish language.

Jewish literature--History and criticism.

Jewish literature.

Jews--United States--Intellectual life.

Jews.

City and town life in literature.

Jews in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (197 pages)

Edition:

Reprint 2013

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This richly suggestive book examines the common bonds of thought and shared manner of expression that unite Jewish writers working in America, Eastern Europe, and Israel. Murray Baumgarten shows how Jewish traditions are reflected in the themes and narrative style of a diverse group of writers, including Saul Bellow, Henry Roth, Sholom Aleichen, Isaac Babel, and S.Y. Agnon. Baumgarten finds in these writers a distinctive and symbolic use of the urban scene arid style of life-whether the city is Brooklyn, Chicago, Vienna, Warsaw, Odessa, or Jerusalem. He examines the pariah stance, and the different kinds of tension between freedom from communal ties and the pull of traditional culture. He demonstrates how Yiddish can flavor and inflect the syntax, how scripture can permeate the thinking and narrative devices, in writers of various nationalities.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

1. An Urban Phenomenon

2. Dual Allegiances

3. Clothing and Character

4. Abishag: The Body's Song

5. Community and Modernity: Sholom Aleichem

6. Folk Speech and Holy Tongue: Agnon and Borges

7. Language Rules

8. City Premises

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-28256-6

OCLC:

1013951666