A Historical Approach to Israeli Literature
- Course Code:
- 15PNMC050
- Status:
- Course Not Running 2013/2014
- Unit value:
- 1
- Taught in:
- Full Year
This course provides the students with the opportunity to read a wide selection of Hebrew literature from the past hundred years. Important writers are set within their cultural and historical context. The different literary movements in Israel are studied using different critical approaches: from formalism and New Criticism to psychoanalytic readings, feminist approach, gender studies, New Historicism and post-modernism.
The course is complementary to the History of Zionism course, giving a different angle to the historical development. We read selections from the writings of some of the leading thinkers of the Zionist movement who have themselves composed fiction and/or influenced the linguistic and literary worlds of the new Israeli writers. The course also gives a historical and linguistic perspective to those students taking the course on Israeli culture, where the emphasis is thematic rather than historical.
Prerequisites
Acceptance on to the host programme.Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
At the end of the course a student will have read a representative selection of Israeli prose and poetry and will be familiar with the major writers and movements of Hebrew writing in Israel from the late nineteenth century up to today.
The student will be able to recognize important literary works composed in Israel and to comment on the themes and stylistic features that characterize this literature.
Scope and syllabus
This course shares teaching with the BA course Introduction to Israeli literature. Two hours of teaching are shared with BA students and there is one additional hour of Masters-tailored tuition per week.
Course outline
The course begins with the emergence of Modern Hebrew literature in the late nineteenth century with an examination of the cultural and historical changes which brought about the birth of Modern Hebrew language and literature. We read a wide selection of texts written in Hebrew by authors living in Europe before turning to the literature of the land of Israel closely linked with the rise of Zionism and the waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
We examine the ideological and literary writings of some of the main figures in the history of the Zionist movement, and the place of the new Hebrew literature in world literature: its models and its relationship with the Bible, the Classics and contemporary European literature. The course continues chronologically up to the 1990s and contemporary Israeli short fiction.
Each week we read prose or poetry by a different writer which both is representative of his/her generation but also unique in his/her poetic voice. In the MA seminar we concentrate on crucial approaches to literature and apply different critical methods to our historical survey.
Among the authors discussed are Mendele Mokher Sfarim, Ehad Haam, H. Y. Brenner, S. Y. Agnon, Haim Hazaz, S. Yizhar, Moshe Shamir, Shulamit Hareven, A. B Yehoshua, Amos Oz, Yehoshua Kenaz, Aharon Appelfeld, Orly Castel-Bloom, and the poets H. N. Bialik, Leah Goldberg, Natan Alterman, Natan Zach, Yehuda Amichai and Dan Pagis.
The course is complementary to the History of Zionism course, giving a different angle to the historical development. We read selections from the writings of some of the leading thinkers of the Zionist movement who have themselves composed fiction and/or influenced the linguistic and literary worlds of the new Israeli writers. The course also gives a historical and linguistic perspective to those students taking the course on Israeli culture, where the emphasis is thematic rather than historical.
Method of assessment
Assessment is by coursework (two assignments each of 4000-4500 words) and one written examination in May-June.Suggested reading
- Abramson, Glenda, The Oxford Book of Modern Hebrew Short Stories (1996)
- Abramson, G. and D. Patterson, Boulder, eds. Transition and Trauma (1994)
- Band, A., Nostalgia and Nightmare (1968)
- Bargad, Warren, From Agnon to Oz: Studies in modern Hebrew literature (1996)
- Brenner, Rachel Feldhay, Inextricably bonded: Israeli Arab and Jewish writers re-visioning culture (2003)
- Burnshaw, Carmi and Spicehandler, The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (1991)
- Carmi, T., Introduction to The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (1981)
- Diamond, James S., Barukh Kurzweil and modern Hebrew literature (1983)
- Domb, R., The Arab in Hebrew prose 1911-1948 (1982)
- Domb, R. (ed.), New women’s writing from Israel (1996)
- Halkin, S., Modern Hebrew Literature (1984)
- Kornberg, J., At the Crossroads (1983)
- Lapidus, Rina, Between snow and desert heat: Russian influences on Hebrew literature 1870-1970 (2003)
- Lelchuk, A., Eight great Hebrew short novels (1983)
- Patterson, David, A darkling plain: Jews and Arabs in modern Hebrew literature (1988)
- Shaked, G., Modern Hebrew fiction (2000)
- Shaked, G., Shmuel Yosef Agnon; a revolutionary traditionalist (1989)
- Shaked, G., (ed), Lives in disguise: autobiographical fiction (2004)
- Spacehandler, E., Modern Hebrew Short Stories (1971)
- Spiegel, Shalom, Hebrew Reborn (1962)
- Yudkin, L. I., Aspects of Israeli Fiction (1985)
- Yudkin, Leon I. Beyond sequence: current Israeli fiction and its context (1992)
