The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction

David Brauner; Axel Stähler

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2015

The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction

David Brauner and Axel Stähler

In the series Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748646166

Overview
Contents

About this book

WINNER of the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Judaica Reference Award

Provides critical overviews of the main writers and key themes of Anglophone Jewish fiction

This collection of essays represents a new departure for, and a potentially (re)defining moment in, literary Jewish Studies. It is the first volume to bring together 28 chapters covering a wide range of American, British, South African, Canadian and Australian Jewish fiction.

The volume is divided into 3 parts – American Jewish Fiction; British Jewish Fiction; and International and Transnational Anglophone Jewish Fiction – but many of the essays cross over these boundaries and speak to each other implicitly, as well as, on occasion, explicitly. Extending and redefining the canon of modern Jewish fiction, the volume juxtaposes major authors with more marginal figures, revising and recuperating individual reputations, rediscovering forgotten and discovering new work, and in the process remapping the whole terrain. This volume opens windows onto vistas that previously had been obscured and opens doors for the next generation of studies that could not proceed without a wide-ranging, visionary empiricism grounding their work.

Key Features

Highlights the rich diversity of the field and identifies its key themes, including immigration, the Diaspora, the Holocaust, Judaism, assimilation, antisemitism and Zionism
Analyses the main trends in Anglophone Jewish fiction and situates them in historical context
Discusses the place of Anglophone Jewish fiction in relation to critical debates concerning transatlanticism and transnationalism; ethnicity and identity politics; postcolonial studies, feminist studies and Jewish Studies
With a preface by Mark Shechner, the volume’s contributors include Vicki Aarons (Trinity University, Texas), Debra Shostak (Wooster College, Ohio), Ira Nadel (University of British Columbia), Efraim Sicher (Ben-Gurion University), Phyllis Lassner (Northwestern University), Sue Vice (University of Sheffield), Lori Harrison-Kahan (Boston College), Ruth Gilbert (University of Winchester), Beate Neumeier (University of Cologne) and Sandra Singer (University of Guelph)

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	iii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface: Jews Have Legs Mark Shechner Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Modern Jewish Fiction David Brauner and Axel Stähler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. American Jewish Fiction
1. Pioneering Women Writers and the De-ghettoisation of Early American Jewish Fiction Lori Harrison-Kahan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. Sensibilities of Estrangement: Delmore Schwartz, Isaac Rosenfeld and Saul Bellow Catherine Morley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
3. The Making of American Jewish Identities in Postwar American Fiction Victoria Aarons Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
4. ‘Are you kidding me?’ Black Humour in the Work of Joseph Heller, Stanley Elkin, Wallace Markfield and Bruce Jay Friedman David Gooblar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
5. American Jewish Life Writing, Illness and the Ethics of Innovation Aimee Pozorski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
6. From Feminist to Housewife and Back Again: Orthodoxy and Modernity in American Jewish Women’s Writing Rachel S. Harris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
7. Soviet Jews, Re-Imagined: Anglophone Émigré Jewish Writers from the USSR Sasha Senderovich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
8. History on a Personal Note: Postwar American Jewish Short Stories David Brauner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
9. Disappointed Believers? The Jewish Question Mark in Eisner’s ‘A Contract with God’ Sarah Lightman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
10. The Holocaust in American Jewish Fiction Jennifer Lemberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
11 Representing the Holocaust in Third-Generation American Jewish Writers Monica Osborne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
12. Marginal Writers; or, Jews Who Aren’t Debra Shostak Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Part II: British Jewish Fiction
13. The Postwar ‘New Wave’ of British Jewish Writing Efraim Sicher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
14. Jewish Émigré and Refugee Writers in Britain David Herman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	188
15. Jewish Exile in Englishness: Eva Tucker and Natasha Solomons Phyllis Lassner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
16. Jewish, Half-Jewish, Jew-ish: Negotiating Identities in Contemporary British Jewish Literature Ruth Gilbert Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
17. Life Writing and the East End Devorah Baum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
18. ‘Almost too good to be true’: Israel in British Jewish Fiction, Pre-Lebanon Axel Stähler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
19. The Writing on the Wall: Israel in British Jewish Fiction, Post-Lebanon Axel Stähler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
20. British Jewish Holocaust Fiction Sue Vice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
21. Reading Matters: ‘Marginal’ British Jewish Writers Beate Neumeier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
Part III: International and Transnational Anglophone Jewish Fiction
22. Jewish Writing in Canada Ira Nadel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
23. South African Jewish Writers Claudia B. Braude Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
24. Repairing Cracked Heirlooms: South African Jewish Literary Memory of Lithuania and Latvia Claudia B. Braude Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	318
25. Australian Jewish Fiction: A Bibliographical Survey Serge Liberman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	332
26. ‘Migrant’ Jewish Writers in the Anglophone Diaspora Sandra Singer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	346
27. Jewish Novels of the Spanish Civil War Emily Robins Sharpe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	355
28. Mooristan and Palimpstine: Jews, Moors and Christians in Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie Shaul Bassi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	367
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	378
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	383
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 456
Illustrations
- Other: 9 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: June 7, 2015
ISBN: 9780748646166