Engaging the Shoah through the Poetry of Dan Pagis: Memory and Metaphor

by Shellie Gordon McCullough

Overview

In the field of Holocaust Studies, there has been a great deal written in English about poets such as Paul Celan, but Dan Pagis’s body of work remains largely undiscovered. By analyzing the Holocaust poetry of Dan Pagis and correlating it to his biography through the identifying tropes of Pagis’s literature, this book seeks to reveal that the speakers of Pagis’ poems embody a resistance to traditional historical, temporal, and structural narratives while also outlining the scarring effects of trauma continually revisited through poetic engagement. Beyond this, the secondary aim of this book is to bring Pagis’s work to light for an audience that solely reads and speaks English.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498532877
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	12/21/2016
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Shellie Gordon McCullough is lecturer of humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Background
Where It All Began: Pagis’s Biography
Chapter I - Eironia
Chapter II - Justice
Chapter III - Kabbalah
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

This book offers McCullough’s path-breaking study of Dan Pagis’ philosophical-literary poetry. She discusses and explicates Pagis’ reaction to the trauma of the Holocaust and analyzes in depth the poet’s difficult yet powerful lyrical approach, demonstrating both his concepts of the limits of representation and the end of the Jewish people after the Holocaust.

Zsuzsanna Ozsvath