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Book Cover
E-book
Author Spinner, Samuel J., author.

Title Jewish primitivism / Samuel J. Spinner
Published Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2021]

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 251 pages) : illustrations
Series Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture
Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture.
Contents The beginnings of Jewish primitivism : folklorism and Peretz -- The plausibility of Jewish primitivism : fictions and travels in An-sky, Döblin, and Roth -- The possibility of Jewish primitivism : Kafka's self and Kafka's other -- The politics of Jewish primitivism : Else Lasker-Schüler and Uri Zvi Grinberg -- The aesthetics of Jewish primitivism I : Der Nister's literary abstraction -- The aesthetics of Jewish primitivism II : Moyshe Vorobeichic's avant-garde photography
Summary "Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesmen. Primitivism--the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called "primitive," non-Western peoples who were also subjugated and denigrated--was a powerful artistic critique of the modern world and was adopted by Jewish writers and artists to explore the urgent questions surrounding their own identity and status in Europe as insiders and outsiders. Jewish primitivism found expression in a variety of forms in Yiddish, Hebrew, and German literature, photography, and graphic art, including in the work of figures such as Franz Kafka, Y.L. Peretz, S. An-sky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Moï Ver. In Jewish Primitivism , Samuel J. Spinner argues that these and other Jewish modernists developed a distinct primitivist aesthetic that, by locating the savage present within Europe, challenged the idea of the threatening savage other from outside Europe on which much primitivism relied: in Jewish primitivism, the savage is already there. This book offers a new assessment of modern Jewish art and literature and shows how Jewish primitivism troubles the boundary between observer and observed, cultured and "primitive," colonizer and colonized"-- Provided by publisher
Analysis Franz Kafka
German-Jewish literature
Jewish culture
Jewish identity
S. An-sky
Y.L. Peretz
Yiddish literature
ethnography
folklore
photography
primitivism
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on July 29, 2021)
Subject Jewish arts -- Europe -- 20th century
Jewish aesthetics -- Europe -- 20th century
Jewish literature -- 20th century -- Themes, motives
Jewish art -- 20th century -- Themes, motives
Primitivism in literature -- History -- 20th century
Primitivism in art -- Europe -- History -- 20th century
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Jewish.
Jewish aesthetics
Jewish arts
Primitivism in art
Primitivism in literature
Europe
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2021011014
ISBN 9781503628281
1503628280