City Scriptures: Modern Jewish Writing

by Murray Baumgarten

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674282551
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2014
Edition description:	Reprint 2013
Pages:	193
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Baumgarten Murray :

Murray Baumgarten is Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Table of 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