Description
Katz (Russian literature and Eurasian studies, St. Anthony's College, Oxford) offers a perspective on representations of Jews in 19th-century realist Russian literature differing from the typical characterization of authors as either philo- or anti-Semitic. Focusing on Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Turgenev, she interprets their ambiguous views of Jews as Other in historical and personal contexts. For example, from her readings of Turgenev's writings with Jewish characters including "The Yid" (1847) and An Unhappy Girl (1869), she points out that none of his works advocates for equal rights for Jews despite his empathy for them as liberals. Reproduced art illustrations show conceptions of Jewish types. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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The debates over the Jewish theme in Russian literature have been long dominated by the old dichotomy between anti and philo-Semitic discourses. Rather than analyzing "the image of the Jew" in terms of negative or positive characteristics, and branding the authors respectively, as anti- or philo-Semitic, the author explores the complexity and the ambiguity of the construction of Jewishness as the "Other" in the works of three of Russia’s greatest nineteenth-century authors. Katz identifies Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev as creators of special modes of the emerging Jewish discourse in Russian literature. She tackles the traditionally read tropes of Jews in light of both sociohistoric and cultural contexts of the time and the writers’ own politics and aesthetics.
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