Authors: David Stern, David Stern (Editor), David Stern
ISBN-13: 9780195137514, ISBN-10: 0195137515
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: October 2004
Edition: (Non-applicable)
David Stern is Ruth Meltzer Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature (1990), Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (1991), and Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (1998).
The anthology is a ubiquitous presence in Jewish literaturearguably its oldest literary genre, going back to the Bible itself, and including nearly all the canonical texts of Judaism: the Mishnah, the Talmud, classical midrash, and the prayerbook. In the Middle Ages, the anthology became the primary medium in Jewish culture for recording stories, poems, and interpretations of classical texts. In modernity, the genre is transformed into a decisive instrument for cultural retrieval and re-creation, especially in works of the Zionist project and in modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature. No less importantly, the anthology has played an indispensable role in the creation of significant fields of research in Jewish studies, including Hebrew poetry, folklore, and popular culture. This volume is the first book to bring together scholarly and critical essays that investigate the anthological character of these works and what might be called the "anthological habit" in Jewish literary culturethe tendency and proclivity for gathering together discrete, sometimes conflicting traditions and stories, and preserving them side by side as though there were no difference, conflict, or ambiguity between them. Indeed, The Anthology in Jewish Literature is the first book to recognize this habit and genre as one of the formative categories in Jewish literature and to investigate its manifold roles. The seventeen essays, each of which focuses on a specific literary work, many of them the great classics of Jewish tradition, consider such questions as: What are the many types of anthologies? How have anthologists, editors, even printers of anthologies been creative shapers of Jewish tradition and culture? What can we learn from their editorial practices? How have politics, gender, and class figured into the making of anthologies? What determinative role has the anthology played in creating the Jewish canon? How has the anthology served, especially in the modern period, to create and recreate Jewish culture. This landmark volume will interest educated laypersons as well as scholars in all areas of Jewish literature and culture, as well as students of world literature and cultural studies.
1 | The anthology in Jewish literature : an introduction | 3 |
2 | Anthology in the Torah and the question of Deuteronomy | 15 |
3 | Wisdom and the anthological temper | 32 |
4 | Order, sequence, and selection : the Mishnah's anthological choices | 53 |
5 | Anthological dimensions of the Babylonian Talmud | 81 |
6 | Anthology and polysemy in classical midrash | 108 |
7 | The prayerbook (siddur) as an anthology of Judaism | 143 |
8 | Yalqut Shim'oni and the medieval midrashic anthology | 159 |
9 | The Hebrew narrative anthology in the Middle Ages | 176 |
10 | Midrash Rabbah and the medieval collector mentality | 196 |
11 | Homo Anthologicus : Micha Joseph Berdyczewski and the anthological genre | 211 |
12 | Sefer Ha'aggadah : creating a classic anthology | 226 |
13 | The ingathering of traditions : Zionism's anthology projects | 244 |
14 | Gender and the anthological tradition in modern Yiddish poetry | 259 |
15 | "Our poetry is like an orange grove" : anthologies of Hebrew poetry in Eretz Yisrael | 281 |
16 | Anthologizing the vernacular : collections of Yiddish literature in English translation | 304 |
17 | Textualizing the tales of the people of the book : folk narrative anthologies and national identity in modern Israel | 324 |
18 | The Holocaust according to its anthologists | 335 |