The poetics of dehumanization in modern Jewish literature
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation is a comparative study of the trope of dehumanization in some of the major works of modern Jewish literature written between 1851 and 1929. Jewish writers such as Heinrich Heine, Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, Chayim Nachman Bialik, Uri Zvi Greenberg, and Franz Kafka found in a dehumanized, bestialized form a universal allegorical figure that captures the place of the Jew as an outcast from human society. The various instances in which Jews are transformed into animals — into a mare in Abramovitsh's story Di Kliatsche; or into fleas and spiders in Bialik's Be'ir Haharegah; or into a "monstrous vermin" in the case of Kafka's Gregor Samsa — expose a state of abandonment to earthly suffering, devoid of redemption, shared by humans and animals. The similarities between Jews and animals in these cases are not restricted to a metaphorical level, but instead reveal an essential aspect of the modern Jewish condition. By consistently depicting a borderline state between humanity and animality, these literary examples allow us to imagine the lived experience of Jews in the modern world before World War II.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Pines, Noam |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Primary advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Thesis advisor | Safran, Gabriella, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Shemtov, Vered Karti |
| Advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Advisor | Safran, Gabriella, 1967- |
| Advisor | Shemtov, Vered Karti |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Noam Pines. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Noam Pines
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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