In this Book
- Imagining Lives: Autobiographical Fiction of Yiddish Writers
- Book
- 2005
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
summary
In interwar and post-Holocaust New York, Yiddish autobiographers responded to the upheaval of modern Jewish life in ways that combined artistic innovation with commemoration for a world that is no more. Imagining Lives: Autobiographical Fiction of Yiddish Writers is the first comprehensive study of the autobiographical genre in Yiddish literature. Jan Schwarz offers portraits of seven major Yiddish writers, showing the writer's struggles to shape the multiple identities of their ruptured lives in autobiographical fiction. This analysis of Yiddish life-writing includes discussions of literary representation, self and collectivity, and memory in modern Jewish literature.
Schwarz shows how Yiddish autobiographical fiction fuses novelistic elements and memoiristic truthfulness in ways that also characterize Jewish life-writing in English and Hebrew. His accessible style, biographical sketches, glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish words, and careful survey of notable texts takes readers on an incomparable journey through modern Yiddish literature.
Schwarz shows how Yiddish autobiographical fiction fuses novelistic elements and memoiristic truthfulness in ways that also characterize Jewish life-writing in English and Hebrew. His accessible style, biographical sketches, glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish words, and careful survey of notable texts takes readers on an incomparable journey through modern Yiddish literature.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xii
- Note on Transliteration
- p. xiii
- Introduction
- pp. 3-22
- Part I. The Classical Trio
- 1 Setting the Stage
- pp. 25-47
- 2 A Whistle of Defiance
- pp. 48-76
- Part II. In America
- 3 The Trials of a Yiddish Writer
- pp. 79-97
- Part III. After the Holocaust
- 5 Of a World That Is No More
- pp. 127-158
- Conclusion
- pp. 159-164
- Chronology
- pp. 167-183
- Bibliography
- pp. 221-229
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299209636
Related ISBN(s)
9780299209605
MARC Record
OCLC
233574009
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No