Language:
English
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
ELH - English Literary History
Angaben zur Quelle:
65,1 (1998) 259-275
Keywords:
Berryman, John,
;
Shapiro, Karl,
;
Jews Cultural assimilation
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Jews Identity
Abstract:
Discusses the identity of American poet Karl Shapiro, an assimilated Jew, and his immediate postwar identification as an American soldier, in contrast to the metaphorical identification of non-Jewish poets like John Berryman (author of the story "The Imaginary Jew", 1945) with the Jew as outsider and victim. Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell also identified with Jews in distancing themselves from middle-brow America. In his 1958 "Poems of a Jew", Shapiro criticizes himself for his past indifference to the Holocaust and accepts his Jewish identity. Shapiro's development symbolizes a process seen in the 1960s, when American Jews began to move beyond assimilation and identify with the suffering of their fellow Jews in the Holocaust.
Note:
Mainly on John Berryman and Karl Shapiro.
,
Appeared also in "The Americanization of the Holocaust" (1999).
URL:
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URL:
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