Antonio's Devils
Subtitle: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and C)
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: June 2, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 368
ISBN-13: 9780804749015
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Judaism - General; Jewish; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Hebrew; Yiddish; Religion; Literary Criticism & Collections / Jewish; History and criticism; Biography; Haskalah; Jewish authors; Jewish literature
First sentence: This book began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford.
Description: "Antonio's Devils deals both historically and theoretically with the origins of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature by tracing the progress of a few remarkable writers who, for various reasons and in various ways, cited Scripture for their own purpose, as Antonio's "devil," Shylock, does in The Merchant of Venice. By examining the work of key figures in the early history of Jewish literature through the prism of their allusions to classical Jewish texts, the book focuses attention on the highly complex strategies the maskilim employed to achieve their polemical and ideological goals. Dauber uses this methodology to examine foundational texts by some of the Jewish Enlightenment's most interesting and important authors, reaching new and often surprising conclusions."--BOOK JACKET.