Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction

Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction PDF Author:
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346192113
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Fachbereich Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft), course: Readings in 21st-Century American Literature, language: English, abstract: In this paper with the title “Jewish American Literature – a Critical Introduction” the focus will be on the origins and elements of Jewish American literature as well as on contemporary writings of the 20th and 21st century. The reasearch for this paper is based predominantly on writings of the American-Israeli professor, Hana Wirth-Nesher, who wrote and edited several books on Jewish American literature. She will be introduced in the beginning of this paper. After that the origins and characteristic elements of Jewish American literature will be described. Contemporary Jewish American literature will be discussed afterwards, followed by an introduction of Philip Roth and two of his novels – Goodbye, Columbus and Indignation. These were chosen in order to give concrete examples of literary works which were both – celebrated and criticized by their audience. The last chapter will consist of a personal reflection concerning Jewish American literature.

Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction

Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction PDF Author:
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346192113
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 18

Get Book

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Fachbereich Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft), course: Readings in 21st-Century American Literature, language: English, abstract: In this paper with the title “Jewish American Literature – a Critical Introduction” the focus will be on the origins and elements of Jewish American literature as well as on contemporary writings of the 20th and 21st century. The reasearch for this paper is based predominantly on writings of the American-Israeli professor, Hana Wirth-Nesher, who wrote and edited several books on Jewish American literature. She will be introduced in the beginning of this paper. After that the origins and characteristic elements of Jewish American literature will be described. Contemporary Jewish American literature will be discussed afterwards, followed by an introduction of Philip Roth and two of his novels – Goodbye, Columbus and Indignation. These were chosen in order to give concrete examples of literary works which were both – celebrated and criticized by their audience. The last chapter will consist of a personal reflection concerning Jewish American literature.

The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature

The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature PDF Author: Benjamin Schreier
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252578
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Benjamin Schreier argues that Jewish American literature's dominant cliché of "breakthrough"—that is, the irruption into the heart of the American cultural scene during the 1950s of Jewish American writers like Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley—must also be seen as the critically originary moment of Jewish American literary study. According to Schreier, this is the primal scene of the Jewish American literary field, the point that the field cannot avoid repeating and replaying in instantiating itself as the more or less formalized academic study of Jewish American literature. More than sixty years later, the field's legibility, the very condition of its possibility, remains overwhelmingly grounded in a reliance on this single ethnological narrative. In a polemic against what he sees as the unexamined foundations and stagnant state of the field, Schreier interrogates a series of professionally powerful assumptions about Jewish American literary history—how they came into being and how they hardened into cliché. He offers a critical genealogy of breakthrough and other narratives through which Jewish Studies has asserted its compelling self-evidence, not simply under the banner of the historical realities Jewish Studies claims to represent but more fundamentally for the intellectual and institutional structures through which it produces these representations. He shows how a historicist scholarly narrative quickly consolidated and became hegemonic, in part because of its double articulation of a particular American subject and of a transnational historiography that categorically identified that subject as Jewish. The ethnological grounding of the Jewish American literary field is no longer tenable, Schreier asserts, in an argument with broad implications for the reconceptualization of Jewish and other identity-based ethnic studies.

Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists

Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists PDF Author: Joel Shatzky
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313033293
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
Since World War II, Jewish-American novelists have significantly contributed to the world of literature. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for more than 75 Jewish-American novelists whose major works were largely written after World War II. Included are entries for both well-known and relatively obscure novelists, many of whom are just becoming established as significant literary figures. While the volume profiles major canonical figures such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Bernard Malamud, it also aims to be more inclusive than other works on contemporary Jewish-American writers. Thus there are entries for gay and lesbian novelists such as Lev Raphael and Judith Katz, whose works challenge the more orthodox definition of Jewish religious and cultural traditions; Art Speigelman, whose controversial ^IMaus^R established a new genre by combining elements of the comic book and the conventional novel; and newcomers such as Steve Stern and Max Apple, who have become more prominent within the last decade. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the novelist's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. A thoughtful introduction summarizes Jewish-American fiction after World War II, and a selected, general bibliography lists additional sources of information. Since World War II, Jewish-American novelists have made numerous significant contributions to contemporary literature. Authors of earlier generations would frequently write about the troubles and successes of Jewish immigrants to America, and their works would reflect the world of European Jewish culture. But like other immigrant groups, Jewish-Americans have become increasingly assimilated into mainstream American culture. Many feel the loss of their heritage and long for something to replace the lost values of the old world. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for more than 75 Jewish-American novelists whose major works were largely written after World War II. Included are entries for both well-known and relatively obscure novelists, many of whom are just becoming established as significant literary figures. While the volume profiles major canonical figures such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Bernard Malamud, it also aims to be more inclusive than other works on contemporary Jewish-American writers. Thus there are entries for gay and lesbian novelists such as Lev Raphael and Judith Katz, whose works challenge the more orthodox definitions of Jewish religious and cultural traditions; Art Speigelman, whose controversial ^IMaus^R established a new genre by combining elements of the comic book and the conventional novel; and newcomers such as Steve Stern and Max Apple, who have become more prominent within the last decade. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the novelist's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. A thoughtful introduction summarizes Jewish-American fiction after World War II, and a selected, general bibliography lists additional sources for information.

Sanctuary in the Wilderness

Sanctuary in the Wilderness PDF Author: Alan Mintz
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804779104
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
The effort to create a serious Hebrew literature in the United States in the years around World War I is one of the best kept secrets of American Jewish history. Hebrew had been revived as a modern literary language in nineteenth-century Russia and then taken to Palestine as part of the Zionist revolution. But the overwhelming majority of Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe settled in America, and a passionate kernel among them believed that Hebrew provided the vehicle for modernizing the Jewish people while maintaining their connection to Zion. These American Hebraists created schools, journals, newspapers, and, most of all, a high literary culture focused on producing poetry. Sanctuary in the Wilderness is a critical introduction to American Hebrew poetry, focusing on a dozen key poets. This secular poetry began with a preoccupation with the situation of the individual in a disenchanted world and then moved outward to engage American vistas and Jewish fate and hope in midcentury. American Hebrew poets hoped to be read in both Palestine and America, but were disappointed on both scores. Several moved to Israel and connected with the vital literary scene there, but most stayed and persisted in the cause of American Hebraism.

The New Jewish American Literary Studies

The New Jewish American Literary Studies PDF Author: Victoria Aarons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110842628X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Introduces readers to the new perspectives, approaches and interpretive possibilities in Jewish American literature that emerged in the twenty-first Century.

The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature

The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature PDF Author: Hana Wirth-Nesher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316395340
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1254

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Book Description
This History offers an unparalleled examination of all aspects of Jewish American literature. Jewish writing has played a central role in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation. This body of writing has also enriched global Jewish literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture. Written by a host of leading scholars, The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature offers an array of approaches that contribute to current debates about ethnic writing, minority discourse, transnational literature, gender studies, and multilingualism. This History takes a fresh look at celebrated authors, introduces new voices, locates Jewish American literature on the map of American ethnicity as well as the spaces of exile and diaspora, and stretches the boundaries of American literature beyond the Americas and the West.

Jewish American Writing and World Literature

Jewish American Writing and World Literature PDF Author: Saul Noam Zaritt
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198863713
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book explores how Jewish American writers like Sholem Asch, Jacob Glatstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anna Margolin, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley think of themselves as world writers, and the successes and failures that come with this role.

Teaching Jewish American Literature

Teaching Jewish American Literature PDF Author: Roberta Rosenberg
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603294465
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
A multilingual, transnational literary tradition, Jewish American writing has long explored questions of personal identity and national boundaries. These questions can engage students in literature, writing, or religion; at Jewish, Christian, or secular schools; and in or outside the United States. This volume takes an expansive view of Jewish American literature, beginning with writing from the earliest colonies in the Americas and continuing to contemporary Soviet-born authors in the United States, including works that engage deeply with religious concepts and others that embrace assimilation. It invites readers to rethink the nature of American multiculturalism, suggests pairings of Jewish American texts with other ethnic American literatures, and examines the workings of whiteness and privilege. Contributors offer varied perspectives on classic texts such as Yekl, Bread Givers, and "Goodbye, Columbus," along with approaches to interdisciplinary topics including humor, graphic novels, and musical theater. The volume concludes with an extensive resources section.

Jewish American Literature Since 1945

Jewish American Literature Since 1945 PDF Author: Stephen Wade
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9781579581961
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Masterpieces of Jewish American Literature

Masterpieces of Jewish American Literature PDF Author: Sanford Sternlicht
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313082324
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Jewish Americans have produced some of the most imaginative, provocative, and widely read literary works of the twentieth century. This book gives students and general readers an introduction to ten of the most significant works of Jewish American literarure. An introductory chapter discusses the historical, cultural, social, and political backgrounds of Jewish American literature. This is followed by chapters on ten major works by Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Michael Gold, Henry Roth, Meyer Levin, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Chiam Potok, Philip Roth, and Cynthia Ozick. Each chapter provides a biography, a plot summary, a discussion of character development, an analysis of themes, an examination of narrative style, an exploration of historical context, and suggestions for further reading. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography. These works reflect the hopes and dreams of Jewish Americans, as well as their challenges and troubles. These works help students understand the cultural and historical events central to Jewish Americans in the twentieth century. This book gives students and general readers an introduction to ten masterpieces of Jewish American literature.