From Continuity to Contiguity

Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

Dan Miron

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780804762007
• eBook ISBN: 9780804775021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire juive

Dan Miron—widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on modern Jewish literatures—begins this study by surveying and critiquing previous attempts to define a common denominator unifying the various modern Jewish literatures. He argues that these prior efforts have all been trapped by the need to see these literatures as a continuum. Miron seeks to break through this impasse by acknowledging discontinuity as the staple characteristic of modern Jewish writing. These literatures instead form a complex of independent, yet touching, components related through contiguity. From Continuity to Contiguity offers original insights into modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literatures, including a new interpretation of Franz Kafka's place within them and discussions of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Akhad ha'am, M. Y. Berditshevsky, Kh. N. Bialik, and Y. L. Peretz.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration
• One - Prologue: Old Questions; Do They Deserve New Answers?
• Two - The “Old” Jewish Literary Discourse and the Illusion of Israeli Cultural Normalcy
• Three - Modern Jewish Literary Thinking, The Enlightenment, and the Advent of Nationalism
• Four - The Jewish Literary Renaissance at the Turn of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of the Twentieth Centuries
• Five - The Inter-Bellum Decades: Hebrew
• Six - The Inter-Bellum Decades: Yiddish; Issues of Cultural Continuity in Revolutionary Times
• Seven - Vertical and Horizontal Continuities and Discontinuities
• Eight - Dov Sadan’s Concept of Sifrut Yisra’el, and Why the “Old” Jewish Literary Discourse Became Irrelevant
• Nine - Jewish Diglossias—Differential and Integral
• Ten - Contiguity: Franz Kafka’s Standing Within the Modern Jewish Literary Complex
• Eleven - Contiguity: How Kafka and Sholem Aleichem Are Contiguous
• Twelve - Conclusion: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking
• Abramovitsh and His Mendele Between Hebrew and Yiddish - Breathing Through Both Nostrils? Shalom Ya’akov Abramovitsh Between Hebrew and Yiddish
• Notes
• Index