This collection includes thirty scholarly essays on Homer and Greek epic poetry published by Margalit Finkelberg over the past three decades. The topics discussed reflect the author?s research interests and represent the main directions of her contribution to Homeric studies: Homer's language and diction, archaic Greek epic tradition, Homer's world and values, transmission and reception of the Homeric poems. The book gives special emphasis to some of the central issues in contemporary Homeric scholarship, such as oral-formulaic theory and the role of the individual poet; Neoanalysis and the character of the relationship between Homer and the tradition about the Trojan War; the multi-layered texture of the Homeric poems; the Homeric Question; the canonic status of the Iliad and the Odyssey in antiquity and modernity. All the articles are revised and updated. The book addresses both scholars and advanced students of Classics, as well as non-specialists interested in the Homeric poems and their journey through centuries

While 'A Traveler Disguised: A Study in the Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century' focused on the rhetoric of the speaking voice or the persona in these classics, the nine essays gathered here concentrate on the artistic reconstruction of the "world" conveyed by that persona. As much as the earlier volume put to rest the conventional understanding of "Mendele the Book-Peddler" as a mere representative of the author, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, this book invalidates the common views of the literary shtetl as a mere mimetic reflection of the historical Jewish shtetl of Eastern Europe and examines its structure as an autonomous aesthetic construct. These essays dwell particularly on the fictional modalities displayed in some of Sholem Aleichem's major works. They also offer innovative insights into the works of both earlier and later masters such as A. M. Dik, Y. Aksenfeld, Y .Y. Linetski and Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Y. L. Peretz, I. M. Vaysenberg, Sh. Asch, D. Bergelson, and I. B. Singer.

Nicholas Horsfall was one of the most recognizable and influential Latinists of his generation. His main legacy is his work on Virgil and the five erudite commentaries on the Aeneid, but he was also a prolific writer of papers, both Virgilian and non-Virgilian. A number of Horsfall's papers, including the important 'Camilla', are translated in this volume for the first time.0Stretching from 1971 to 2015, the papers are drawn from his entire output demonstrating his unparalleled ability to connect Roman poetry with history, antiquarianism, and Realien. While showcasing his unique analysis of Virgil, it also highlights Horsfall's work as both a Latinist and a Romanist, illuminating the coherence in his approach. This volume includes many Virgilian papers that have become classics-on Aeneas the colonist, and on the Aeneas-legend, for example. This does not detract from the value of the non-Virgilian papers, many of which-on the collegium poetarum, and on discussions of reading and libraries at Rome, for example-have become standard treatments of their subjects. Throughout all these works there is an astonishing degree of connection, with glimpses in many papers of his other research interests.0'Nicholas Horsfall needs to be approached through his short papers, typically fresh, innovative and stimulating, and he has been so productive that nobody can claim to have had a full view of his scholarship. When it comes to placing a literary text in the frames offered by material culture, documents, landscapes, history, and by religious, legal, military and antiquarian studies, he was unrivalled.' Professor Alessandro Barchiesi, Professor of Classics, New York University.

"These two long essays make up a short book, one full of depth and knowledge, in which Eva Brann gets at the roots of our thinking--without tearing things apart. Then: In the first, Brann parses out the schema and meaning of Herodotus's The History (The Persian Wars). She writes that Herodotus worked by indirection. Giving a full account of the Persians and the peoples who constituted their empire--and whose empire encircled the Greeks (thus the 'Greek center')--Herodotus delineates the essential difference between the Barbarians and the Greeks. This difference Brann calls Athens' 'elusive essence,' its freedom contrasting with the slavery upon which the Persian empire depended. Now: In the second essay, the author delves into what it means for a person to unite a disposition toward conservatism with a capacity to reiterate and rehearse events, scenes, and dramas in 'the conservatory of the imagination.' To uncover the meanings and consequences of this union--this imaginative conservatism--and the type of soul to which it applies, Brann offers twelve perspectives, starting with 'Temperamental Disposition,' and ending with 'Eccentric Centrality,' (without ever explicitly focusing on politics). Join her and you'll find both delight and education. Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty-seven years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include Un-Willing, The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to Americans, Open Secrets/Inward Prospects, The Music of the Republic, and Homeric Moments (all published by Paul Dry Books)"--

Winner, 2015 USC Book Award in Literary and Cultural Studies, for outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the fields of literary and cultural studies The Ethics of Witnessing investigates the reactions of five important Polish diaristswriters—Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, Maria Dabrowska, Aurelia Wylezynska, Zofia Nalkowska, and Stanislaw Rembek—during the period when the Nazis persecuted and murdered Warsaw’s Jewish population. The responses to the Holocaust of these prominent prewar authors extended from insistence on empathic interaction with victims to resentful detachment from Jewish suffering. Whereas some defied the dehumanization of the Jews and endeavored to maintain intersubjective relationships with the victims they attempted to rescue, others selfdeceptively evaded the Jewish plight. The Ethics of Witnessing examines the extent to which ideologies of humanism and nationalism informed the diarists’ perceptions, proposing that the reality of the Final Solution exposed the limits of both orientations and ultimately destroyed the ethical landscape shaped by the Enlightenment tradition, which promised the equality and fellowship of all human beings.

Dan Miron's erudite and rich essay chronicles and analyzes the rise and fall of the prophetic poem in modern Hebrew literature. While focusing on H. N. Bialik's contribution to the rise and decline of the prophetic poem, Miron analyzes the historical, literary, and artistic factors influencing the fate of the prophetic poem from its ascendancy during the period of Hebrew Romanticism of the late 1890s and early 1900s to its decline in the post-World War I era and its eventual demise with the rise of the new poetics and the establishment of the State of Israel. In addition to Bialik, Miron discusses the works of Avraham Mapu, M.L. Lilienblum, Issac Irter, Shaul Tchernikhovsky, A. Shlonsky, U. Z. Greenberg, Yonatan Ratosh, Haim Gouri, and Amir Gilboa, among others.

"While analyzing the novels, short stories and memoirs, Alexander assesses Singer's place in European and world literary history."

Sefer Zerubbabel, the Book of Zerubbabel, is a Hebrew apocalyptic work composed during the wars between the Byzantine and Persian empires in the early decades of the seventh century of this era, shortly before the Muslim conquest of the Middle East. Himmelfarb places Sefer Zerubbael's narrative in the context of Christian tradition and contemporary Byzantine culture on the one hand and earlier Jewish eschatological traditions on the other. The impact of the Christian messianic narrative can be seen in Sefer Zerubbabel's depiction of the messiah son of David in terms of Isaiah's suffering servant and in the death and resurrection of the messiah son of Joseph, while contemporary Byzantine ideas about the Virgin as the patron and protector of Constantinople help to make sense of Sefer Zerubbabel's otherwise startling depiction of the mother of the messiah as a warrior defending Jerusalem. Sefer Zerubbabel also shows many points of contact with traditions about the messiah in rabbinic literature, but, the author argues, it is not dependent on the rabbinic formulation of those traditions. Rather, both the rabbis and Sefer Zerubbabel drew on popular traditions, which they reshaped for their own purposes. The rabbis tend to play down messianic hopes while Sefer Zerubbabel embraces them more enthusiastically. Thus reading Sefer Zerubbabel and rabbinic literature side by side allows us to recover some elements of the popular Jewish messianism of the early centuries of the Christian era. The book concludes by considering Sefer Zerubbabel's impact on a corpus of Jewish eschatological texts from the centuries after the rise of Islam.--

Discusses the Russian Jewish poet (born Eduard Dzyubin, 1895-1934), including the role that antisemitism played in regard to the publication (or non-publication) of his works and to their interpretation. Mentions, in particular, the Russian ultra-nationalist Stanislav Kunyayev, who viewed Bagritskii both as an "alien trespasser in the fields of Russian poetry" and as a self-hating Jew. Focuses on the poems "Origin" and "February" and their relation to the poet's Jewishness, which contemporary and later Soviet criticism minimized. Examines the Jewish trauma of rejection depicted in "February" and the protagonist's reactions to it. Denies the antisemitic view that the Jew in the poem rapes a Russian woman. Rejects the image of Bagritskii as a self-hating Jew, as well as the allegation that he has no place in Russian culture. Bagritskii was hoping for a synthesis, a utopia where a Russian-Jewish identity was possible and welcome. The fate of his works, as well as those of Soviet Jews who outlived him, proved otherwise.

"This volume celebrates the literary oeuvres of David Shrayer-Petrov-poet, fiction writer, memoirist, essayist, and literary translator (and medical doctor and researcher in his parallel career). Author of the refusenik novel Doctor Levitin, Shrayer-Petrov is one of the most important representatives of Jewish-Russian literature. Published in the year of Shrayer-Petrov's eighty-fifth birthday, thirty-five years after the writer's emigration from the former USSR, this is the first volume to gather materials and investigations that examine his writings from various literary-historical and theoretical perspectives. By focusing on many different aspects of Shrayer-Petrov's multifaceted and eventful literary career, the volume brings together some of the leading American, European, Israeli and Russian scholars of Jewish poetics, exilic literature, and Russian and Soviet culture and history. In addition to fifteen essays and an extensive interview with Shrayer-Petrov, the volume features a detailed bibliography and a pictorial biography"--

In November 1979, Selma James spoke at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. Her subject was 'Ms Jane Austen', and she was enthusiastically received. Here is what she had to say, much expanded and enriched.

The emerging Jewish national consciousness in Europe toward the end of the 19th century claims many spiritual fathers, some of which have been seriously underestimated so far. Zionist intellectuals such as Moses Hess, Leon Pinsker and Isaac Rülf were already committed to the self-liberation of the Jewish people long before Theodor Herzl. Their experiences and observations brought them to believe that the emancipation and integration of Jews were not realistically possible in Europe. Instead, they began to think in national and territorial terms. The author explores the question as to what extent religious messianism influenced the ideas of these men and how this reflects in today's collective Israeli consciousness. In a comprehensive epilogue, Julius H. Schoeps critically correlates ideas of messianic salvation, Zionist pioneer ideals, the settler's movement before and after 1967, and the unsolved conflict between Israelis and Palestinians which has been lasting for over 100 years -- From publisher's provider

Analyzes the works of Canadian Jewish poet A.M. Klein (1909-1972) written in the late 1920s-early 1950s, reading them as a combative poetic response to history. Klein's early poetry in "Hath Not a Jew, " composed against the background of the rise of antisemitism in Europe and in Montreal, his hometown, reveals his deep identification with Jewish tradition and his disillusionment with the humanist inability to confront Nazism. Deeply affected by news of the Holocaust, he wrote his mock epic "The Hitleriad" in 1942, in which he presented Hitler's ugliness, mediocrity, and meanness of spirit. This seems an attempt to demystify Hitler, paralleled perhaps by Arendt's concept of the banality of evil. "The Rocking Chair, " a collection of poems, and the novel "The Second Scroll" represent Klein's attempt to come to terms with the post-Holocaust world. Ch. 4 (pp. 61-80), "The Hitleriad: Against the Silence of the Apocalypse, " appeared in "Studies in American Jewish Literature" 9 (1990).

Zusammenfassung: "Gustav Mahler and Julius Korngold, critic at the highly influential newspaper Neue Freie Presse, had much in common. He, along with his fellow journalists, were close to and supportive of Mahler. For the first time, their essays on the man and his music are made available in English. The essays on Mahler and his time at Vienna's Imperial Opera were extensive and well informed. Julius Korngold had replaced Eduard Hanslick as principal music critic. Both Korngold and Mahler shared a common Moravian Jewish background, born in 1860 and both students of Anton Bruckner. Mahler also took an early interest in Korngold's son, the child prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The paper was Jewish owned, and Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Movement, was its cultural editor and Julius Korngold's employer. Claims that Mahler was driven out of a Vienna by an antisemitic press are wrong given Mahler's support by the most powerful critic of the day writing in the Empire's most influential newspaper. Importantly, the essays also reveal a world of Modernism that includes Mahler's innovations at the opera, and Modernism in music before departures from tonality. This book will interest Mahler enthusiasts, musicians and cultural historians. Mahler was claimed by Arnold Schoenberg as his musical hero, firmly placing him in the Modernist camp. Yet Korngold was universally seen as an archconservative and his relationship with Mahler was personal and his understanding profound. The book addresses the question of "Mahler, the first Modernist or the last Romantic?""--