Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) [Hardcover]

Robert Alter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300084242 | ISBN-13: 978-0300084245 | Publication Date: September 10, 2000

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 Amarika, 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The term canon, which originally referred only to the collection of sacred scriptures endorsed by ecclesiastical authority, has in recent decades been adapted to a secular context, as a name for the collection of great books most venerated by mainstream cultural authorities. The term's elasticity is the subject of Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture by literary critic Robert Alter (author of The Art of Biblical Narrative and translator of Genesis and The David Story). Alter begins with a brief essay on the history of the canon of the Hebrew Bible; his subsequent readings of Kafka, Joyce, and the Russian poet Bialik (who wrote in Hebrew) concentrate on the ways in which each writer's creative strengths were enabled by their reference to the biblical canon. Together, the four essays present a compact, understated argument against the idea that canon is merely "a vehicle for theological truths" and praising "the perennial liveliness of the old canonical texts as a resource for imagination and moral reflection." --Michael Joseph Gross

From 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 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300084242
• ISBN-13: 978-0300084245
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #492,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bible and Modern Artists, April 17, 2001

By 

Ira Slomowitz (Kfar Saba, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) (Hardcover)

For those familiar with Alter's other works on Biblical literature this will be a joy. It focuses on how three great modern writers use the Bible to create their own art. Although the three writers, Kafka, Bialik and Joyce use the Bible differently than traditional writers - they treat the Bible with the utmost respect. Alters shows how the great moderns appreciate the wonders of the Bible and use it to enhance their art. Canon and Creativity will help you understand the artistic process of the moderns and the ancients. This is a book that the writer clearly enjoyed writing - and the intelligent reader will enjoy reading.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The uses of the Biblical canon by modern creators, November 16, 2004

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) (Hardcover)

Alter opens his book this way,"Over the last quarter of a century ,the term canon,which previously had been restricted to the body of Sacred Scripture approved by ecclesiastical authority, attained general currency in academic circles as designation for the corpus of secular literary works implicity or explicitly endorsed by established cultural authority as worthy of preservation through reading and study." He speaks shortly afterwards about his goals in the work ," I want to explore the dynamics of canonicity,attending to the way the exemplary canonical corpus of the Western tradition,the Bible is assimilated and reused by poets and writers of fiction." Alter goes on after examining " The Double Canonicity of the Hebrew Bible " to explore the way three ' secular 'writers Kafka, Bialik and Joyce put the 'Canon' to use for their own creative purpose.
For those who love 'literary criticism ' at its best this is a work well- worth reading.