The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture - Softcover

Wisse, Ruth R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226903184 ISBN 13: 9780226903187

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2003

Synopsis

What makes a great Jewish book? In fact, what makes a book "Jewish" in the first place? Ruth R. Wisse eloquently fields these questions in The Modern Jewish Canon, her compassionate, insightful guide to the finest Jewish literature of the twentieth century. From Isaac Babel to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elie Wiesel to Cynthia Ozick, Wisse's The Modern Jewish Canon is a book that every student of Jewish literature, and every reader of great fiction, will enjoy.

About this title

Review:

The Modern Jewish Canon is Ruth R. Wisse's attempt to establish a set of criteria for a canon of Jewish literature (mainly prose fiction written by Ashkenazi Jews and their descendants in the 20th century). This is a fascinating, odd, and ambitious book, whose big ideas are ultimately less interesting than its small observations. Wisse, who is a firm believer in the moral power of fiction ("Even considering the dangers to the text that may accompany a moral education, I would argue that the importance it ascribes to words more than compensates for the occasional violence it does to them"), designates "Jewish literature" as work that "tells the stories of the Jewish people in the twentieth century ... best." The Modern Jewish Canon never provides a convincing, specific explanation of what exactly that means. As a result, some passages of the book (such as Wisse's ejection of Marcel Proust from her canon) seem irrationally parochial. Wisse's strongest readings concern "how the language in which Jewishness is conceived affects the nature of the literary work." She is highly sensitive to the different ways that Hebrew, Yiddish, English, Russian, and German languages give rise to distinct kinds of political, moral, religious, and literary sensibilities. --Michael Joseph Gross

About the Author:

Ruth R. Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University. Born in Romania and raised in Montreal, she was the first professor of Yiddish Literature in North America (at McGill University, where she helped to found the Jewish Studies Department in the late 1960s). She has written or edited eight previous books on Jewish literature and culture, including The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, published by the University of Chicago Press, and If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0226903184
• ISBN 13: 9780226903187
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416