Does David Still Play Before You?: Israeli Poetry and the Bible / Edition 1

by David C. Jacobson

Overview

Does David Still Play Before You? explores the ways that contemporary Israeli poets have made use of images from the Bible in their poetry.

Does David Still Play Before You? explores the ways that contemporary Israeli poets have made use of images from the Bible in their poetry. Through close readings of fifty poems, featured in their original Hebrew and in English translation, David Jacobson studies how Israeli poets respond to and incorporate the Bible in their work and reflect on the presence of the Bible in contemporary Israeli culture. The book provides a stunning collection of powerful and moving voices. Jacobson organizes the works according to subjects that recur with great frequency in Israeli poetry based on the Bible: the Arab-Israel conflict, responses to the Holocaust, relations between men and women, and modern challenges to traditional religious faith. Jacobson's literary analysis is informed by an astute awareness of the role of the Bible in Israeli culture. This volume is the first comprehensive study of the use of the Bible by Israeli poets, a phenomenon that is central to the development of Israeli poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814326237
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	06/01/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David C. Jacobson, an associate professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University, earned his Ph.D. from UCLA. He is the author of Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Tewentieth-Century Hebrew Writers.

What People are Saying About This

Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Ucla - Arnold J. Band

Jacobson's Does David Still Play Before You? is a bold venture in criticism since it treats a major aspect of modern Hebrew poetry, its Biblical resonances, yet goes far beyond the routine evocation of 'Biblical allusions.' Like any study of intertextuality, it demonstrates how cultural texts of the past are appropriated and assimilated in modern creative works . . . The selection of poems studied is dazzling in its richness and variety. The volume is a tour de force.

Editorial Reviews

Jacobson's Does David Still Play Before You? is a bold venture in criticism since it treats a major aspect of modern Hebrew poetry, its Biblical resonances, yet goes far beyond the routine evocation of 'Biblical allusions.' Like any study of intertextuality, it demonstrates how cultural texts of the past are appropriated and assimilated in modern creative works . . . The selection of poems studied is dazzling in its richness and variety. The volume is a tour de force.

Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, UCLA - Arnold J. Band