The Hidden Isaac Bashevis Singer (Literary Modernism) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292728689 ISBN 13: 9780292728684

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2002

Synopsis

Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer stands virtually alone among prominent writers for being more widely known through translations of his work than through the original texts. Yet readers and critics of the Yiddish originals have long pointed out that the English versions are generally shortened, often shorn of much description and religious matter, and their perspectives and denouements are significantly altered. In short, they turn the Yiddish author into a Jewish-American English writer, detached from of his Eastern European Jewish literary and cultural roots.

By contrast, this collection of essays by leading Yiddish scholars seeks to recover the authentic voice and vision of the writer known to his Yiddish readers as Yitskhok Bashevis. The essays are grouped around four themes:

• The Yiddish language and the Yiddish cultural experience in Bashevis's writings
• Thematic approaches to the study of Bashevis's literature
• Bashevis's interface with other times and cultures
• Interpretations of Bashevis's autobiographical writings

A special feature of this volume is the inclusion of Joseph Sherman's new, faithful translation of a chapter from Bashevis's Yiddish "underworld" novel Yarme and Keyle.

About this title

About the Author

Seth L. Wolitz holds the L. D., Marie, and Edwin Gale Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also Professor of French, Slavic, and Comparative Literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0292728689
• ISBN 13: 9780292728684
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Wolitz Seth L.