Mark H. Gelber - Böcker

A new critical assessment of the works of the Austrian-Jewish author, in whom there has been a recent resurgence of interest, from the perspective of world literature.The twenty-first century has seen a renewed surge of cultural and critical interest in the works of the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who was among the most-read and -acclaimed authors worldwide in the 1920s and1930s but after 1945 fell into critical disfavor and relative obscurity. The resurgence in interest in Zweig and his works is attested to by, among other things, new English translations and editions of his works; a Brazilian motion picture and a best-selling French novel about his final days; and a renewed debate surrounding the literary quality of his work in the London Review of Books. This global return to Zweig calls for a critical reassessment of his legacy and works, which the current collection of essays provides by approaching them from a global perspective as opposed to the narrow European focus through which they have been traditionally approached. Together, theintroduction and twelve essays engage the totality of Zweig's published and unpublished works from his drama and his fiction to his letters and his biographies, and from his literary and art criticism to his autobiography.Contributors: Richard V. Benson, Jeffrey B. Berlin, Darién J. Davis, Marlen Eckl, Mark H. Gelber, Robert Kelz, Klemens Renoldner, Birger Vanwesenbeeck, John Warren, Klaus Weissenberger, Robert Weldon Whalen, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young.Birger Vanwesenbeeck is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Mark H. Gelber is Senior Professor of Comparative Literature and German-Jewish Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

New essays providing an up-to-date picture of the engagement of artists, philosophers, and critics with Kafka's work.The topic of "Kafka after Kafka" is a fascinating one: the engagement of artists, philosophers, and critics in dialogical exchange with Kafka's works. The present collection of new essays highlights the engagement of lesser knownartists and commentators with Kafka, and represents those who are well known, such as Arendt, Blanchot, Nabokov, and Coetzee, from new perspectives. The eleven essays contained here represent the most recent scholarly engagements with this topic. An essay on major trends in current Kafka criticism provides background for several essays on novelists, philosophers, and critics whose relationship to Kafka is not very well known. A section devoted to Kafka from an Israeli perspective includes artists not commonly known in the US or Europe (Ya'acov Shteinberg, Hezi Leskly, Sayed Kashua), as well as an essay on the recent trial in Israel regarding the fate of Kafka's literary legacy. A final section addresses important contemporary approaches to Kafka in film studies, animal studies, the graphic novel, and in postmodern culture and counterculture.Contributors: Iris Bruce, Stanley Corngold, AmirEngel, Mark H. Gelber, Sander L. Gilman, Caroline Jessen, Tali Latowicki, Michael G. Levine, Ido Lewit, Vivian Liska, Alana Sobelman.Iris Bruce is Associate Professor of German at McMaster University. Mark H. Gelber is Senior Professor and Director of the Center for Austrian and German Studies at Ben-Gurion University.

A new critical assessment of the works of the Austrian-Jewish author, in whom there has been a recent resurgence of interest, from the perspective of world literature.The twenty-first century has seen a renewed surge of cultural and critical interest in the works of the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who was among the most-read and -acclaimed authors worldwide in the 1920s and1930s but after 1945 fell into critical disfavor and relative obscurity. The resurgence in interest in Zweig and his works is attested to by, among other things, new English translations and editions of his works; a Brazilian motion picture and a best-selling French novel about his final days; and a renewed debate surrounding the literary quality of his work in the London Review of Books. This global return to Zweig calls for a critical reassessment of his legacy and works, which the current collection of essays provides by approaching them from a global perspective as opposed to the narrow European focus through which they have been traditionally approached. Together, theintroduction and twelve essays engage the totality of Zweig's published and unpublished works from his drama and his fiction to his letters and his biographies, and from his literary and art criticism to his autobiography.Contributors: Richard V. Benson, Jeffrey B. Berlin, Darién J. Davis, Marlen Eckl, Mark H. Gelber, Robert Kelz, Klemens Renoldner, Birger Vanwesenbeeck, John Warren, Klaus Weissenberger, Robert Weldon Whalen, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young.Birger Vanwesenbeeck is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Mark H. Gelber is Senior Professor of Comparative Literature and German-Jewish Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

This volume deals with the significance of the avant-garde(s) for modern Jewish culture and the impact of the Jewish tradition on the artistic production of the avant-garde, be they reinterpretations of literary, artistic, philosophical or theological texts/traditions, or novel theoretical openings linked to elements from Judaism or Jewish culture, thought, or history.

Ruth Klüger (1931 – 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary history. She is also recognized as a poet in her own right, an essayist, and a feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she was a guest professor in Göttingen and Vienna. Her memoir, entitled weiter leben (1992), which she translated and revised in an English parallel-text as Still Alive, was a major bestseller and highly regarded autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor. It was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right. Ruth Klüger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other distinctions. The present volume, The Legacy of Ruth Klüger and the End of the Auschwitz Century, aims to honor her memory by assessing critically her writings and career. Taking her biography and writings as points of departure, the volume includes contributions in fields and from perspectives which her writings helped to bring into focus acutely. In the table of contents are listed the following contributions: Sander L. Gilman, "Poetry and Naming in Ruth Klüger’s Works and Life"; Heinrich Detering, "’Spannung’: Remarks on a Stylistic Principle in Ruth Klüger’s Writing"; Stephan Braese, "Speaking with Germans. Ruth Klüger and the ‘Restitution of Speech between Germans and Jews’"; Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, "Writing Auschwitz: Jean Améry, Imre Kertész, and Ruth Klüger"; Ulrike Offenberg, "Ruth Klüger and the Jewish Tradition on Women Saying Kaddish; Mark H. Gelber, "Ruth Klüger, Judaism, and Zionism: An American Perspective"; Monica Tempian, "Children’s Voices in the Poetry of the Shoah"; Daniel Reynolds, "Ruth Klüger and the Problem of Holocaust Tourism"; Vera Schwarcz, "A China Angle on Memory and Ghosts in the Poetry of Ruth Klüger."

This volume deals with the significance of the avant-garde(s) for modern Jewish culture and the impact of the Jewish tradition on the artistic production of the avant-garde, be they reinterpretations of literary, artistic, philosophical or theological texts/traditions, or novel theoretical openings linked to elements from Judaism or Jewish culture, thought, or history.

Ruth Klüger (1931 – 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary history. She is also recognized as a poet in her own right, an essayist, and a feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she was a guest professor in Göttingen and Vienna. Her memoir, entitled weiter leben (1992), which she translated and revised in an English parallel-text as Still Alive, was a major bestseller and highly regarded autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor. It was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right. Ruth Klüger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other distinctions. The present volume, The Legacy of Ruth Klüger and the End of the Auschwitz Century, aims to honor her memory by assessing critically her writings and career. Taking her biography and writings as points of departure, the volume includes contributions in fields and from perspectives which her writings helped to bring into focus acutely. In the table of contents are listed the following contributions: Sander L. Gilman, "Poetry and Naming in Ruth Klüger’s Works and Life"; Heinrich Detering, "’Spannung’: Remarks on a Stylistic Principle in Ruth Klüger’s Writing"; Stephan Braese, "Speaking with Germans. Ruth Klüger and the ‘Restitution of Speech between Germans and Jews’"; Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, "Writing Auschwitz: Jean Améry, Imre Kertész, and Ruth Klüger"; Ulrike Offenberg, "Ruth Klüger and the Jewish Tradition on Women Saying Kaddish; Mark H. Gelber, "Ruth Klüger, Judaism, and Zionism: An American Perspective"; Monica Tempian, "Children’s Voices in the Poetry of the Shoah"; Daniel Reynolds, "Ruth Klüger and the Problem of Holocaust Tourism"; Vera Schwarcz, "A China Angle on Memory and Ghosts in the Poetry of Ruth Klüger."

Kafka’s Jewish background, interests, and readings, and their relevance for his writings, are still largely viewed as marginal within the vast domain of Kafka scholarship. By taking into account new findings, theoretical approaches, and historical developments, the essays in this volume reconsider and extend our knowledge of Kafka’s relationship to Judaism and Jewish thought.

This volume contains the lectures, many substantially expanded and revised, which were delivered at an international conference held at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva in 1990. By utilizing the methodological guidelines and insights of reception aesthetics, a range of Jewish readings of Heine's works and his complex literary personality are analyzed. Considerations of his impact on major figures, like Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Karl Kraus, Else Lasker-Schüler, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Max Brod comprise the major part of the book. In addition, there are readings of Heine by minor or neglected Jewish writers and poets, including, for example, Aron Bernstein and Fritz Heymann, and by Jewish writers in Hebrew and Yiddish literature, as well as by Jewish readers within other national readerships, for example, the American and Croatian. In the process of this analysis, the notion of Jewish reception itself is naturally subjected to critical scrutiny.

This study attempts to analyze the multi-faceted and complicated relationship between the Central European, Germanic-Austrian cultural milieu and the Jewish national literature and culture which evolved within it at the turn of the last century. Issues regarding the construction and differentiation of a modern Jewish national identity and culture as an aspect of Cultural Zionism are central to this project, as are the problematical literary and cultural partnerships forged in an age of rising racialist thought, growing feminist consciousness, and increasing secularism.

This volume contains the lectures delivered at an international conference in Israel devoted to the topic of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Zionism. Kafka's interests in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish Nationalism and his various relationships to his Zionist friends and his participation in Jewish national and Zionist-related activity are explored from a number of different critical vantage points. Likewise, his writings are considered within the specific framework of Jewish nationalism and Zionism.

This volume is comprised of 14 contributions, which are revised and expanded versions of lectures held at an international conference on Stefan Zweig that took place in Israel in 2004. The essays focus on Zweig's biographical writings (for example Erasmus and Fouché), as well as on several aspects of his literary works that have been neglected since the revival of academic studies of his writings and career commenced some 25 years ago. These include: Zweig's conception of the daemonic, Zweig and Christianity, the discourse of love in his writings, Zweig as an Austrian eulogist, his understanding of theater, etc. Contributors from Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Slovenia, and Israel bring refreshingly diverse perspectives and new concerns to this scholarly project. With contributions from Vera Apfelthaler, Matjaz Birk, Denis Charbit, Sarah Fraiman-Morris, Mark H. Gelber, Jacob Golomb, Bernhard Greiner, Gert Kerschbaumer, Hanni Mittelmann, Klaus Mueller, Michel Reffet, Ingrid Spoerk, Robert Wistrich.

In 2004 the one-hundredth anniversary of Theodor Herzl’s death was commemorated throughout the world. The myth of Herzl, as it has developed over the last century, has perhaps become more important than the historical figure. This volume contains revised and expanded essays, which were originally delivered as lectures at international Herzl centennial conferences in Antwerp, London, and Jerusalem. Topics treated include the Herzl myth, Herzl’s nationalism and Zionism, his self-understanding and image, his authorship of comedies and philosophical tales, Herzl and Africa, as well as his reception in Israeli and other literature. Zweig films are also considered within this same context.