Language:
English
Year of publication:
2021
Titel der Quelle:
Places and Forms of Encounter in Jewish Literatures; Transfer, Mediality and Situativity
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2021) 207-225
Keywords:
Hebrew literature, Modern History and criticism 19th century
;
Hebrew literature, Modern History and criticism 20th century
;
Jews Books and reading 19th century
;
History
;
Jews Books and reading 20th century
;
History
Abstract:
Modern Hebrew literature, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, with its dramatic developments in poetry, short stories and essays, is mostly described as a central institution of the Jewish nation-building project. However, throughout its national period, this was a non-sovereign literature, produced and read by minor Jewish communities in their European host cultures. This chapter presents the far-reaching consequences of the transnational infrastructure of the modern Hebrew literary field. First, I argue with the assumption that modern Hebrew literature developed as a national, pre-statehood institution, and suggest to rethink the meaning of its territorial dispersion. Subsequently I readdress the fact that throughout its early constitutive national phases, the modern Hebrew readership never extended beyond a social minority. I argue for the identification of a new group of readers in the modern Hebrew readership: those with restricted Hebrew literacy, who could not understand modern Hebrew texts, but approved of the national implications of such writing.
DOI:
10.1163/9789004435285_011
URL:
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