Language in Time of Revolution

Benjamin Harshav, was a translator, poet, and scholar of Hebrew and Yiddish literature. Harshav was and the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale University, and in 1992, a professor of Slavic languages and literature.

• PREFACEPART I • THE MODERN JEWISH REVOLUTIONAn Essay on the History of Culture and Consciousness1. Transformations: Extrinsic and Intrinsic 2. The Internal Response to History 3. A New Period in History 4. The Centrifugal Movement 5. The Force of Negation 6. The New Cultural Trends 7. The Secular Polysystem 8. Assimilation 9. A Jewish Century 10. The Continuous Rainbow 11. The Individual 12. Flashback: Collapse and Victory of the Enlightenment 13. Politics and Literature 14. Consolidation 15. Two Endings to One Revolution 16. The Age of Modernism PART II • THE REVIVAL OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGEAnatomy of a Social Revolution17. The Miracle of the Revival of Hebrew 18. The Social Existence of Language 19. Theory of Twin Systems 20. Language as a Unifying Force 21. The Pitfalls of Scholarship 22. The Beginnings of the Language Revival 23. Three Factors in the Revival of the Language 24. The Life of "Dead" Hebrew 25. The Revival of Written Hebrew 26. New Cells of Society in a Social Desert 27. Ashkenazi or Sephardi Dialect? 28. Remarks on the Nature of Israeli Hebrew 29. Principles of the Revolution: A Retrospective Summary 30. Remarks Toward a Theory of Social Revolution PART III • SOURCES ON THE HEBREW LANGUAGE REVIVALTranslated from Hebrew by Barbara HarshavRachel Katznelson: Language Insomnia (1918) Yitzhak Tabenkin: The Roots (1937) Berl Katznelson: On the Question of Languages (1919) Yosef Klauzner: Ancient Hebrew and Modem Hebrew (1929)Tsvi Shats: Exile of Our Classical Poetry (1919) REFERENCESINDEX