Overview
In this illuminating book, one of our foremost literary critics views the much-debated question of the literary canon from an entirely new angle. Robert Alter explores the ways in which a range of iconoclastic twentieth-century authors have put to use the stories, language, and imagery of the paramount canonical text—the Hebrew Bible. Alter makes a compelling case against the prevalent, pejorative notion of the canon as a vehicle of ideological enforcement. He shows instead that canons by nature are surprisingly elastic, providing later writers with imaginative resources even when those same writers rebel against what they conceive as the constraints of the canon.Focusing special attention on Franz Kafka's Amerika, Haim Nahman Bialik's The Dead of the Desert, and James Joyce's Ulysses, Alter brings to bear an unusual perspective, putting into a single frame of discussion three writers from widely different linguistic traditions (German, Hebrew, English) and from disparate cultural settings (Prague, Odessa, Dublin). Alter's close readings of these major modern writers reveal how reference to canonical antecedents can be both surprisingly various and enabling. Examining the diverse modes in which Biblical material becomes interwoven with the fabric of a new work, he also offers new insights into the nature and range of modernism. Critically appreciative rather than polemic in tone, Alter conveys in this thoughtful book a renewed sense of the vitality of literary modernism.
About the Author:
Robert Alter is Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his many previous books are The Art of Biblical Narrative, Necessary Angels, and most recently The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel.
Synopsis
Approaching the debates about literary canon from an entirely new angle, a foremost literary critic explores how a range of iconoclastic twentieth-century authors (in particular Kafka, Bialik, and Joyce) have put to use the paramount canonical text—the Hebrew Bible. Robert Alter argues against the notion that the canon is a vehicle of ideological enforcement and shows instead that canons are by nature surprisingly elastic and enabling for later writers
Choice
A concise, powerful statement by one of the best contemporary literary critic-scholars.
Editorials
Choice
A concise, powerful statement by one of the best contemporary literary critic-scholars.Publishers Weekly -
In an impressive display of literary acuity, veteran UC-Berkeley critic Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative, etc.) studies the works of three modernist writers while also reexamining the notion of canon. Much of Alter's attention in recent years has been devoted to biblical study, and here he brings his deep knowledge of the biblical text to bear in looking at three works, two familiar to most readers (Kafka's Amerika and Joyce's Ulysses) and a third a more surprising but also gratifying choice (the lengthy poem "The Dead of the Desert" by the great Hebrew-language poet Haim Nahman Bialik, with the entire text in translation reprinted here). Alter argues that for these three writers the Bible did indeed serve as a canon but not in the traditional sense of a "sealed corpus of texts that is the source of all authority and... truths," but rather in a literary fashion as a "luminous poetic achievement," a rich field of language, images and motifs to be exploited. For Joyce, for instance, the Bible is a foundational text along with the Odyssey, yet he treats it not as a sacred text but as a "textual residue, part of the flotsam and jetsam of modern culture," little bits and strands of which appear in various characters' stream-of-consciousness. In arguing that the literary canon is more "quirky and various" than most people admit, Alter concludes that the biblical canon as well "is by no means the simple and assured phenomenon of enshrining doctrine in text," admitting such contrary points of view as those of Job and Ecclesiastes. This book will appeal only to the lit-crit crowd and to readers interested in the impact of religion on the arts and culture, but for such readers, it displays a dazzling ability to interpret texts, both ancient and modern. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Alter (Hebrew and comparative literature, Berkeley; Necessary Angels) discusses the biblical canon (and the nature of literary canonical writing) as an open system for change and imaginative response. He shows how postbiblical Hebrew writers Ibn Gabirol (1021-1050s), Samuel HaNagid (993-1056), Judah Halevi (1075?-c.1141), Haim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), and Saul Tchernikhovsky (1875-1943) used intertextuality to bring new insight to canonic ideas. Alter's profound reading of Bialik's poem "The Dead of the Desert" stresses the modern mythological use of biblical themes. Franz Kafka's Amerika is described as a modern retelling of the Joseph and Exodus stories, while James Joyce's Ulysses is read as various allusions to the Bible and Homer's Odyssey, among myriad other texts. The author shows special insight into Joyce's comic use of the Bible. Alter has written a convincing short book describing the nonideological nature of canon formation and its divergent use by very different imaginative writers. Recommended for literature collections.--Gene Shaw, NYPL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Esther H. Schor
Alter's slim Canon and Creativity (based in part on his 1999 Rosenzweig lectures at Yale) supplies a brilliant counterreading of Jewish modernism. In elegant essays on Kafka and Bialik, Alter, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, identifies ''an impulse to displace entirely the doctrinal canonicity of the Bible with its literary canonicity.''New York Times Book Review