The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity [Hardcover]

Linda Nochlin (Editor), Tamar Garb (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996

What does the "Jew" stand for in modern culture? The conscious or unconscious, often hysterical repetition of myths and exaggerations, and the repertory of cliches, fantasies and phobias surrounding the stereotypes of the Jew and the Jewess, have meant that they are figures frequently represented both in the world of literature and art and in the industries of popular culture. Taking particular instances of the portrayal of the Jew in fiction, painting and prints, in film, caricature, pamphlets, medical journals, propaganda and architecture - in works by authors and artists as different as Dickens, Lautrec, Proust, Sargent, Joyce and Sartre - this book demonstrates how representations of the Jew are embodied in some of the best-known cultural products, situated "in the text" itself, not behind or beyond it. In specially-written essays by cultural historians and critics, including Julia Kristeva, Marshall Berman and Sander Gilman, this book explores the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which Jewish identity was conceived and expressed in modern European and American culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The concept of being Jewish in the modern world is the subject of this collection of specially commissioned essays. The place of the Jew as the other is brilliantly explicated in essays on Tolouse-Lautrec, Bernhardt, Proust, Mauclair, and Rebatet. Lissitzky's use of Hebrew letters in his paintings is explained as a specific Jewish mystical undertaking, while Leopold Bloom is understood to be the Jew as everyman. Modern anti-Semitism brings into question the projects of the Enlightenment and literary realism, as is shown in essays on Sartre and Dickens. Closer to home are their essays on Hollywood and the Holocaust Museum. A fascinating book full of sociological, literary, and methodological insights; recommended for religion and literature collections.?Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 335 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500016674
• ISBN-13: 978-0500016671
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,871,233 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful book on identity, August 24, 2003

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I. Tysoe "Inna Tysoe" (Earth) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity (Hardcover)

Ours is an age in which identity is constructed by and through texts. In this book we see the texts from which the Jewish people can construct their identity. Here is Dickens justifying his demonic portrayal of Fagin to a horrified British lady by saying that "Fagin in Oliver Twist is a Jew, because it was unfortunately true of the time in which the story refers, that the class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." Or how about this quote from the famous novel "The Butterfl": "The language of the Jew reveals the Jew's hidden character, no matter what language the Jew tries to speak." And here too is the association of the Jewess with eroticism, with the orient; and of the male Jew with capitalism and with exploitation. Here also is the image of Proust: a Jew, a Catholic, a homosexual, and a Dreyfussard struggling to also be French; and here is Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses.

These identities, these portraits emerge in a collection of essays by some of the most notable writers of our time; they ask us to think what it means to be a Jew in an European society today-not merely to answer the question "Why do they hate us" but to try to answer the question: "With such a rich tradition of anti-Semitism (for anti-Semitism is woven into the very fabric of European tradition) how can a Jew in a European country have a positive image of him/herself?"