Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Heidelberg, 2001. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 477-504).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Heidelberg, 2001. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 477-504).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The purpose of this work is to offer a study of the novels of Jewish-American author Henry Roth, situating those novels within several contexts, namely: early twentieth century life and ethnography in New York City, immigrant-specifically Jewish-experience, Judaism, with special reference to Eastern European orthodoxy, Roth's autobiographical style, and Hebrew literature. Of particular note is the issue of continuity that Roth himself incessantly sought.The first chapter provides a biographical sketch of Henry Roth, weaving together a brief story of his life that includes commentary upon his boyhood years, his family and relationships, his novels, and the sixty-year-long writer's block that intervened between publication of his first novel, Call It Sleep, and the 1990s volumes of the Mercy of a Rude Stream series; four novels of that series are currently in print. Chapter Two offers a brief outline of Jewish history that not only helps place Roth among the Eastern European Diaspora Jews of early twentieth century New York City but that also introduces the concepts of sin, atonement, and covenant that pervade Roth's writings.Chapter Three is devoted to an examination of Call It Sleep. This third chapter introduces and credits previous Roth scholarship while discussing the novel as an immigrant story, as Hebraic literature in its use of Midrashic elements and themes, and as ethnography. Additionally, this section suggests that Call It Sleep is somewhat polemic in its emphasis upon the Judaic convenant, despite Roth's assimilationist.stance during the years in which he composed the novel.Sequent to a fourth chapter describing the years between 1934 and the 1990s, years in which Roth found himself unable to write another novel and published but sporadically in periodicals, a fifth chapter discusses Roth's Mercy of a Rude Stream series. Those novels, again valuable documents that accurately depict turn-of-thecentury New York as well as the tale of the immigrant, exhibit continuity both among themselves and with Roth's first novel in their covenant thematic and Midrashic structure. Concepts discussed include intertextuality, teshuvah, and kedushah. The conclusion provides summary and is followed by a brief glossary. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Columbia International University, 2002. / Abstrakt. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-135).

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) wrote this little phrase one day in a notebook: Writing as a form of prayer. This dissertation will examine his highly personal and Judaic conception of the act of writing in order to demonstrate that it constitutes in fact the cornerstone of Kafka's activity as a writer and that it can be traced in a significant number of his literary works as their regulating instance. / In order to do so, we will first examine the social, political and economic conditions prevailing in Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century, in order to ascertain its tremendous impact on the Jewish communities living in that part of the world, in terms of loss of traditional Jewish identity culminating in many cases in assimilation. Kafka's work will thus firstly be situated in the historical and political context out of which it emerged. / In the course of this work, we have used the concepts of sacre and profane as developed by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade throughout in order to demonstrate that there exists in Kafka's work a constitutive tension articulated between those two poles, not only at the level of the plot, but at the level of language itself. / Since the central element at the root of this tension is expressed in terms of presence and absence, we have also analysed the philosophy of language of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, which are themselves articulated exactly in those terms. / The use of these categories has helped us show that if Kafka's work is indeed at time very close to that of Scholem and Benjamin, especially in its literary rendition of motives underlining the absence of the divine in language, it also distinguishes itself markedly from the work of the two philosophers by the use of other motives which underline the immediate presence of the message of Revelation, made directly accessible within the modern and profane language, which is also that of literature.

Thesis (M.A.)--Columbia International University, 2002. / Abstrakt. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-135).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-202). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Columbia International University, 2002. / Abstrakt. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-135).