To the Heart of Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Blaustein
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
Alfred Kazin ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Advance Guard

F. O. Matthiessen and Alfred Kazin were the advance guard of a generation of American scholars bringing American literature to Europe after the war, but their European encounters shaped “American literature” as a canon. Matthiessen was a gay Christian socialist who taught in Czechoslovakia just before the 1948 communist coup; he committed suicide, in 1950, having come under suspicion for “un-American” activities. Originally a scholar of Elizabethan translation, Matthiessen’s encounters in Europe changed his sense of what does and doesn’t get lost in carrying over a novel, an ideology, or the entire “American renaissance.” Kazin was a Jewish-American writer whose encounters in the wake of the Holocaust yielded opposing conclusions. Their dialogue, alongside European commentaries, illuminates the power of literature in postwar reconstruction. What did it mean for a Czech Americanist to read Keats in Buchenwald? And what did it mean for Europeans to read Moby-Dick in the postwar ruins?

The Gnosis of Toni Morrison: Morrison’s Conversation with Herman Melville, with a Nod to Umberto Eco

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-376
Author(s):  
Justine Tally
Keyword(s):  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
Nag Hammadi ◽  
The Us ◽  
The University ◽  
The Rose

Abstract Long before Toni Morrison was extensively recognized as a serious contender in the “Global Market of Intellectuals,” she was obviously reading and absorbing challenging critical work that was considered “provocative and controversial” by the keepers of the US academic community at the time. While no one disputes the influence of Elaine Pagels’ work on Gnosticism at the University of Princeton, particularly its importance for Jazz and Paradise, the second and third novels of the Morrison trilogy, Gnosticism in Beloved has not been so carefully considered. Yet this keen interest in Gnosticism coupled with the author’s systematic study of authors from the mid-19th-century American Renaissance inevitably led her to deal with the fascination of Renaissance authors with Egypt (where the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were rediscovered), its ancient civilization, and its mythology. The extensive analysis of a leading French literary critic of Herman Melville, Prof. Viola Sachs, becomes the inspiration for a startlingly different reading of Morrison’s seminal novel, one that positions this author in a direct dialogue with the premises of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick, also drawing on the importance of Gnosticism for Umberto Eco’s 1980 international best-seller, The Name of the Rose.

scholarly journals Emancipation from the Whirlwind: Piety and Rebellion among Jewish-American Post-Holocaust and Christian Liberation Readings of Job

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David C Tollerton
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Theologically Conservative ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Political Radicalism ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

This article focuses upon the manner in which the Book of Job’s dissonant messages of theological radicalism and conservatism have been utilised within discussion of two specific episodes of innocent suffering in the modern world – the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and the suffering of the oppressed in the developing world. Overlaying the discussion, the following model is proposed: that, firstly, Christian liberation theologians emphasise the more theologically conservative messages that can be drawn from Job while asserting radical political opposition to those who possess power. Conversely, Jewish Holocaust theologians empathise with Job’s more theologically radical elements, yet do so within outlooks committed to conservatively maintaining the security and power of the state of Israel after two thousand years of Jewish powerlessness. This model is tested by focusing upon seven treatments of Job associated with liberation or Holocaust theologies. It is concluded that, although there are significant complications, in broad terms the model largely holds ”“ offering a comparative insight into contextual Christian and Jewish interpretations of the Bible in which political radicalism and theological radicalism are found to be at odds with one another.

Rising from the Gutter

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-92
Author(s):  
Jean Lee Cole
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Lower East Side ◽  
East Side ◽  
Jewish American Literature ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
English Speaking

This chapter shows how the early comic strip was developed and then came to influence comic fiction in the early twentieth century. As the editor of the New York Journal‘s comic supplement, Rudolph Block regularized the use of panels, repetitive storylines, and caricature, resulting in the multi-panel format that defines the comic-strip genre. Block’s role in the development of the comic strip has gone largely unrecognized; as a writer of Jewish American literature, Block has been forgotten. Using the pseudonym Bruno Lessing, Block published nearly a hundred stories between 1905 and 1920 in popular magazines. These humorous stories, full of rich dialect and accompanied by vibrant illustrations, translated the multiethnic culture of the Lower East Side for a mainstream, English-speaking audience. Block represented dialect and caricature as opportunities for negotiation and play, providing ways to display identity in multiple and shifting forms.

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