Rev. thesis New York Univ. 2004. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

180 Abstract The English-language title of the work Holokaust jako fikce is not entirely unambiguous, because the equivalent, The Holocaust as a Fiction, due to its indefinite article, comes close to denial of the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon. That is of course utterly unacceptable nonsense; however, we encounter denial (concealment) of the Holocaust in history even during the course of the war. Here the author intends to emphasize the basic limits of his own theme. It is not the Holocaust as a historical event - the extermination of European Jewry by means of National Socialist politics in the years 1939-45 - but rather the literary works representing these events. The methodological point of departure is the theory of fictional worlds (Lubomír Doležel etc.), and what interests us is the transfer of actual events into possible and fictional worlds, the representation of the results of that crossover in literary works. The work is divided into four chapters. After delimiting the approaches terminologically and theoretically, each focuses on a functional approach to the given representation. The Holocaust is investigated in this manner in three main chapters: the Holocaust as testimony, the Holocaust as a limit situation and the Holocaust as a literary transduction. The Holocaust as testimony devotes...

This dissertation examines how Marcel Proust presents and uses different speech styles in A la recherche du temps perdu. The narrator of the novel analyzes how almost everyone he encounters speaks and consistently bases his decisions about how to interact with others on his evaluation of their speech mannerisms. I argue that, through the narrator’s observations, Proust emphasizes the role of the socioindexicality of speech, or how the way a person speaks communicates their social identity, in mediating social relations. I begin by presenting the narrator’s comments on how social status is interpreted through the way that people speak. Then I turn in the second chapter to how the narrator’s understanding of what factors determine a person’s speech mannerisms changes over the course of his life. The third chapter argues that the narrator has a sustained interest in how people use speech to perform different identities and shows how his investigation into the reasons these performances succeed or fail informs Proust’s own technique of using different speech styles to create fictional characters in his novel. The last chapter discusses how Proust’s Jewish and gay characters adapt how they speak to avoid or overcome discrimination. In each of these chapters, I show how, in A la recherche, the way social identity is interpreted and performed through speech causes individuals to take on different identities. I argue that, through the narrator’s comments on this phenomenon, Proust demonstrates how it affects the structure of society while also studying the way it can be used to create fictional characters in a novel.

The present study aims to bring into focus the antinomian doctrine of redemption through sin as it appears in Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière. According to Michelet, the witch-cult was both vestigial paganism and an attempt at overthrowing the Christian political order. The witch redeemed mankind by sinning against the Christian order, thus anticipating the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as well as the French Revolution. The notion of redemption through sin, borrowed from Gershom Scholem, will enable us to compare Michelet’s and Scholem’s approaches to history and counter-history. It will also allow us to read La Sorcière against a broader religious background than is usually employed. Among the sources of Michelet, the often overlooked kabbalistic, possibly Sabbatian, subtext will be assessed in relation to his peculiar female messianism. Likewise, the episode, in La Sorcière, of the encounter between the witch and the Jew will be thoroughly studied. This may lead us to better comprehend Michelet’s theology, with the biblical God being akin, in his opinion, to that of the witches.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 378-404).

Race science is built on ideas of division and categorization. In the historian's quest to tell the story of race science, certain frameworks have been used that can greatly inhibit our understanding of this fraught topic. The impulse to study race science in the framework of the nation-state has led to certain misconceptions and lends itself to a historical narrative wherein racist concepts stop at artificially imposed borders. In addition, the national framework detracts from the individual's contributions and instead lumps these contributions together on the level of the nation-state, thus opening the door for judgments about whole nations being more or less responsible for race science. In this work, I explore contributions to race science pertaining to the "Jewish race" (which I have simplified to the phrase "Jewish race science") made by individual French writers and scholars. These contributions have been overlooked at times by historians who look to more notorious examples, such as those made by German race science theorists; in failing comprehensively to examine all significant contributions to race science, historians have often inhibited their own ability to understand Jewish race science fully. If such a historical field is to be understood, one must be aware of the full range of development of Jewish race science, both in terms of geographical scope and scholarly focus. By bringing attention to Jewish race science contributions made in nineteenth-century France, it is my intention to broaden the understanding of this field and to help bring about a new approach to the field that is less reliant on the nationalist framework in its evaluation of the nature and impact of race science.

Affrontando lo studio della Letteratura Italiana risulta evidente l'omissione dai manuali, ad eccezione di Primo Levi, degli scritti di coloro che sono stati deportati tra il 1939 e il 1945 in seguito alle persecuzioni razziali. Il tempo trascorso dalla Shoah ha, invece, dimostrato la presenza di un ingente quantità di opere che costituiscono il corpus della Letteratura Concentrazionaria, ossia la letteratura dei campi di concentramento. Gli autori di questa letteratura sono poco conosciuti e considerati minori, ma la loro scrittura raggiunge spesso un'ineguagliabile altezza intellettuale, morale, stilistica. La narrazione dei loro ricordi traumatici è il risultato di precise decisioni: quali fatti raccontare, in che ordine cronologico, ma soprattutto attraverso quale forma. Questi testi concentrazionari, infatti, possono essere studiati da diversi punti di vista, quello più inusuale è la divisione per generi: racconto, autobiografia, saggio, romanzo, diario, lettera, poesia. Non sempre la distinzione fra questo o quel genere è netta, ma è molto significativo che a partire da una tragedia, quale l'Olocausto, si possa scegliere di raccontare la propria esperienza prestando attenzione al modo di esprimerla. È il primo segno che dimostra quanto anche di fronte al male l'uomo non perda il desiderio di ricercare il vero ed il bello. / Such a long time has passed since the end of the Shoah and it has become clear that there are a lot of works written in those years which now form the corpus of literature based on the experiences in concentration camps. The authors of these works are not very well-known and they are usually considered minor but their works have often reached highly intellectual, moral and stylistic results. The narration of their traumatic memories is the result of precise decisions, i.e. what to tell, in what chronological order, but especially in what forms. The texts based on the experiences in concentration camps can in fact be studied from different points of view. The most unusual is their study through genres: short story, autobiography, essay, novel, journal, letter, poetry. The distinction between one genre and another is not often clear-cut. What is interesting to underline is that in front of a tragedy, as the Holocaust was, it is possible to choose to tell one's own experience by paying special attention to the way of expressing it. This is evidence that in front of evil man does not ever lose the desire to look for truth and beauty.

Thesis contains the novel "Waterval" by Phyllis Sakinofsky. / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 128-138. / PART ONE -- Introduction -- Section One -- Early history -- The apartheid years - two realities -- Post-apartheid South Africa -- The creative response of Jews to apartheid -- Section Two -- Our relationship with the past: placing narrative in the context of history -- Rememory and representation -- Telling the truth through stories -- Section Three -- Imprints of memories, shadows and silences: shaping the Jewish South African story -- PART TWO -- Waterval: a work of fiction by Phyllis Sakinofsky / This is a non-traditional thesis which comprises a work of fiction and a dissertation. -- The novel is set in South Africa and provides an account of events that took place among three families, Jewish, Coloured and Afrikaans, over three generations. -- The dissertation is constructed in three sections. The first section describes the settlement of South Africa's Jewish community, its divergent responses to apartheid and how this is mirrored in its literary output. -- In the second section, the relationship between history and fiction since the advent of postmodernism is discussed, how there has been a demand for historical truthfulness through multiple points of view and how consequently there has been an upsurge in memories and memorials for those previously denigrated as the defeated or victims. -- Fiction has been re-valued because it is through the novel that these once-submerged stories are being told. The novel has the capacity to explore uncomfortable or silenced episodes in our history, tell important truths and record stories and losses in a meaningful and relevant way. A novel might be shaped by history but it is through the writer's insights and interpretations that messages or meanings can reach many. -- South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission report is an example of how the written word can expose the relationship between the re-telling of history and finding an alternate truth. By recording the many conflicting stories of its peoples, it has linked truth and literature, ensuring an indelible imprint on the country's future writing. The past cannot be changed, but how the nation deals with it in the future will be determined by language and narrative. -- The final section is self-reflexive and illustrates the symbiotic bond between the research and creative components, citing examples from the dissertation of how the two streams influenced one another. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 145 p

The thesis will examine the influence of Biblical literature on some of the novels of George Eliot. In doing so it will consider the following aspects of Eliot criticism: current theoretical debate about the use of midrash; modes of discourse and narrative style; prophetic language and vision; the influence of Judaism and Jewish exegetical methods on Adam Bede, "The Lifted Veil", The Mill on the Floss, Felix Holt, and Daniel Deronda. Literary critics have, for a long time, been interested in the influence of the Bible and Biblical hermeneutics on literature and the extent to which Biblical narratives and themes are used typologically and allegorically in fiction has been well researched. In this regard, the concept of midrash is not a new one in literary theory. It refers both to a genre of writing and to an ancient Rabbinic method of exegesis. It has, however, been given new meaning by literary critics and theoriticians such as Frank Kermode, Harold Bloom, and Jacques Derrida. In The Genesis of Secrecy, Kermode gives a new nuance to the word and demonstrates how it may be used to read not only Biblical stories but secular literature as well. It is an innovative, self-reflexive, and intricate hermeneutic processs which has been used by scholars such as Geoffrey Hartman and Sanford Budick, editors of Midrash and Literature, a seminal work in this thesis. Eliot's interest in Judaism and her fascination with religion, religious writing, and religious characters are closely connected to her understanding of the novelist's role as an interpreter of stories. In this regard, the prophetic figure as poet, seer, and interpreter of the past, present, and future of society is of special significance. The thesis will investigate Eliot's reinterpretation of this important Biblical type as well as her retelling of Biblical stories. It will attempt to establish the extent to which Eliot's work may be called midrash, and enter the current debate on how and why literary works have been and can be interpreted. It will address the questions of why Eliot, who abjures normative religious faith, has such a profound interest in the Bible, how the Bible serves her creative purposes, why she is interested in Judaism, and to what extent the latter informs and permeates her novels.