Language:
German
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
Bilder des Jüdischen
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2013) 351-367
Keywords:
Menasse, Robert,
;
Crypto-Jews in literature
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
Abstract:
In the novel "Die Vertreibung aus der Hölle" (2001), the Austrian Jewish writer Robert Menasse draws parallels between the life story of Spinoza's teacher, Menasseh ben Israel, and the apprenticeship of the fictitious historian Viktor Abravanel in the 1960s-70s. Argues that the novel reinstates the traditional motif of Conversos in German-language literature, a subject which had been abandoned and forgotten. Describes how Menasse thematizes the production, communication, and interpretation of historigraphic knowledge and categories such as nation, identity, and normativity. Discusses how the history of the Conversos is used by Menasse in metahistoriographical fictional discourse. Deals, also, with Menasse's use of the history and fate of the Conversos as a projection screen for the Shoah. Views the superimposition of the Shoah on earlier stages of Jewish history as an attempt by children of Holocaust survivors, such as Menasse, to appropriate the past in their own way.
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