Neither with Them, Nor Without Them: The Russian Writer and the Jew in the Age of Realism

The debates over the Jewish theme in Russian literature have been long dominated by the old dichotomy between anti and philo-Semitic discourses. Rather than analyzing the image of the Jew in terms of negative or positive characteristics, and branding the authors respectively, as anti- or philo-Semitic, the author explores the complexity and the ambiguity of the construction of Jewishness as the Other in the works of three of Russia's greatest nineteenth-century authors. Katz identifies Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev as creators of special modes of the emerging Jewish discourse in Russian literature. She tackles the traditionally read tropes of Jews in light of both sociohistoric and cultural contexts of the time and the writers' own politics and aesthetics.

Author: Elena Katz
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 05/02/2008
Pages: 366
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.48w x 1.18d
ISBN: 9780815631828

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2008 pg. 248

About the Author
Elena M. Katz was the Max Hayward Fellow in Russian Literature in the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, St. Antony's College, Oxford.