Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 79-82.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 748-754). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

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Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Université Charles-De-Gaulle Lille 3, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

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This dissertation critically examines the question of language revival in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Hebrew literature. Focusing on major texts that participate in the political and aesthetic endeavor of reviving Hebrew as an exclusive national language, this study traces the narrative of revival and explores the changes and iterations it underwent in the course of several decades, from the 1890s to the early 1920s. Informed by a wide range of critical literary theory, I analyze the primary tropes used to articulate the process whereby Hebrew came to inhabit new discursive roles. Building on close readings of canonical texts by authors ranging from Ahad Ha’am and Mikha Yosef Berdichevsky to Hayim Nahman Bialik, Rachel Katznelson, and Yosef Hayim Brenner, I argue that while modern Hebrew literature largely rejected the philological assumption that Hebrew was a dead language, it nevertheless produced a discourse around the notion of “revival,” in a manner that deferred the possibility of perceiving Hebrew as fully living. My readings show that while many of these texts contemplate linguistic transformation in terms of revitalization or birth, the national mission of language revival is in fact entwined with mourning, and ultimately produces the object of revival as neither dead nor fully alive. Dwelling on the ambivalence and suspension of that moment, and examining a range of nuances in its articulation, I explore the roles that Hebrew language and literature play in nationalization, Zionism, and the constitution of a new Hebrew subjectivity.

This dissertation examines the life and work of the Jewish writer Uri-Nisn Gnesin (1879-1913). Living in Russia, using Yiddish in his daily life, and writing prose in Hebrew, Gnesin was part of a multicultural and multilingual generation, which was too assimilated to live the traditional life of its fathers, and yet, not able to break with it completely. For many Russian Jews, this dual identity, rarely recognized in modern scholarly discourse on Hebrew literature, resulted in psychological discomfort, feelings of guilt, and other traumas. Addressing this identity crisis, I show how the worldview of an assimilated Russian Jew is reflected in Gnesin’s Hebrew fiction. I offer an alternative view of Gnesin as a Jewish-Russian writer whose dual identity played a more complex role in his literary work and whose influence transcended a simple knowledge of languages or classic texts. It was not merely a language or a book, but the unique Jewish-Slavic atmosphere of small Eastern European towns that provided Gnesin with all the models necessary for thinking, feeling, and writing. In my study, I consider theories of canonization to demonstrate the reason why Gnesin has first and foremost been categorized as a Hebrew writer. Contemporary scholars of modern Hebrew fiction generally agree that Gnesin’s fiction is secular due to the non-Jewish associative infrastructure of his work. By exploring the historical and spiritual conditions of Gnesin’s generation, I attempt to overcome the limitations of such a view, which overemphasizes the role of language in his development as a writer. A functional analysis of Gnesin’s literary language maintains that although he found his best form of expression in literary Hebrew, it appeared mostly in the final stages of his writing. I propose that Gnesin and that whole generation of modern Hebrew writers used a special “hyper-language” consisting of three integral parts: a natively spoken language, a commonly spoken non-Jewish national language, and a written literary language. Ultimately, Gnesin appears to be a fin de siècle writer who used Hebrew language as a sophisticated tool to propagate his troubled Jewish-Russian experience. / text

This is a study of Chava Shapiro, a woman writer, born in 1876 in the Ukraine, who died in 1943 in Nazi Czechoslovakia. It describes her conventional Hasidic upbringing, her successful rebellion against it and her subsequent studies in Switzerland which led to a career in Hebrew journalism. It follows her return to Russia in 1914, her escape to Czechoslovakia after the pogroms of 1919 and 24 years later her tragic end in Terezin. / Dominating the study is the well-known Hebrew writer, Reuven Brainin, 1862-1939, with whom Chava Shapiro fell in love and who exerted an extraordinary influence on her life. / Using original, never before published materials from the Jewish Public Library Archives in Montreal, the study seeks to define the woman as a feminist and a Hebrew writer.

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