ENGLISH

On the Margins of Modernism: Decentering Literary Dynamics

Book information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2020
ISBN
9780520914131
DOI
10.1525/9780520914131
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
14 MB (14544035 bytes)
Series
Contraversions: Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society; 2
Edition
Reprint 2019
Pages
275\309
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-08-21 12:36:30

Description

Modernism valorizes the marginal, the exile, the "other"—yet we tend to use writing from the most commonly read European languages (English, French, German) as examples of this marginality. Chana Kronfeld counters these dominant models of marginality by looking instead at modernist poetry written in two decentered languages, Hebrew and Yiddish. What results is a bold new model of literary dynamics, one less tied to canonical norms, less limited geographically, and less in danger of universalizing the experience of minority writers. Kronfeld examines the interpenetrations of modernist groupings through examples of Hebrew and Yiddish poetry in Europe, the U.S., and Israel. Her discussions of Amichai, Fogel, Raab, Halpern, Markish, Hofshteyn, and Sutskever will be welcomed by students of modernism in general and Hebrew and Yiddish literatures in particular.

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