From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

Dan Miron--widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on modern Jewish literatures--begins this study by surveying and critiquing previous attempts to define a common denominator unifying the various modern Jewish literatures. He argues that these prior efforts have all been trapped by the need to see these literatures as a continuum. Miron seeks to break through this impasse by acknowledging discontinuity as the staple characteristic of modern Jewish writing. These literatures instead form a complex of independent, yet touching, components related through contiguity. From Continuity to Contiguity offers original insights into modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literatures, including a new interpretation of Franz Kafka's place within them and discussions of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Akhad ha'am, M. Y. Berditshevsky, Kh. N. Bialik, and Y. L. Peretz.

Author: Dan Miron
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 07/19/2010
Pages: 560
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.60d
ISBN: 9780804762007
Award: National Jewish Book Award - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2011
Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2011 pg. 247

About the Author
Dan Miron is Leonard Kay Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author more than thirty volumes of literary scholarship and criticism in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German, and Russian.