Wilhelm Raabe's Der Hungerpastor and Charles Dickens' David Copperfield


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Der Hungerpastor (1864-65) is Wilhelm Raabe's most popular novel. This monograph shows how Raabe borrowed much of the plot and characters from Charles Dickens's best-selling David Copperfield (1849-50). By providing the reasons why Raabe borrowed from Dickens, this study goes far beyond the existing research on the parallels between these two Bildungsromane. A comparison of the heroes, their Jewish antagonists and a number of female characters demonstrates the extent of Raabe's indebtedness to Dickens. The intertextuality ranges from direct verbal echoes to a mere use of Dickens's ideas upon which Raabe builds a novel distinctly his own.




Der Hungerpastor


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The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire


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Explores the uses of Yiddish language in German literary and cultural texts 1781 until the late nineteenth century. This book explores the uses of Yiddish language in German literary and cultural texts from the onset of Jewish civil emancipation in the Germanies in 1781 until the late 19th century. Showing the various functions Yiddish assumedat this time, the study crosses traditional boundaries between literary and non-literary texts. It focuses on responses to Yiddish in genres of literature ranging from drama to language handbooks, from cultural criticism to the realist novel in order to address broader issues of literary representation and Jewish-German relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Professor Grossman shows how the emergence of attitudes toward Jews and Yiddish is directly related to linguistic theories and cultural ideologies that bear a complex relationship to the changing social and political institutions of the time. Amidst the rise of national ideologies and modern anti-Semitism, the increasing consolidation of institutions, and the drive to cultural homogeneity in the 18th- and 19th-century German context, Yiddish functioned as an anarchic element that, in the view of its opponents, "threatened" to dissolve German nationalculture. Grossman locates the response to Yiddish in the context of historical events (the Hep Hep Riots of 1819, the Revolution of 1848) and institutional changes (Jewish legal emancipation, the promotion of Bildung as an educational and cultural ideal). In its methodology and its focus, this study seeks to show how the conflicted responses to the Yiddish language point to the problems that connected and frequently divided Jews and Germans as they soughtto re-invent themselves for a new and unsettling context.




Wilhelm Raabe


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"Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910) is one of the major figures of 19th-century German Realist writing, acknowledged as an innovator both stylistically and thematically. But until now there has been little concentration on the international and postcolonial dimensions of Raabe's work - his literary critique of colonialism, his engagement with modernization and globalization, his involvement in 19th century German discourses about America, Africa and Asia, and the links between international and national issues in his writing. In Raabe International, contributions from many eminent critics address Raabe both as a writer on world affairs and as a subject himself for translation and comment outside of Germany."





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Philo-Semitism in Nineteenth-Century German Literature


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The work begins with an attempt to understand the philosophy of Nazism and its attendant anti-Semitism, as a necessary prelude to the study of philo-Semitism, which also displays a continuous tradition to the present day. Most of the non-Jewish authors in Germany in the nineteenth century expressed both anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic views (as did most of the German-Jewish authors of that same time); the following work deals with philo-Semitic texts by the non-Jewish authors of the period. The writer who provides the largest body of relevant material is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, but works by Gutzkow, Bettine von Arnim, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Hebbel, Freytag, Raabe, Fontane, Grillparzer, Ebner-Eschenbach, Anzengruber, and Ferdinand von Saar are also examined, as are several tales by the Alsatian authors Erckmann and Chatrian. There is a short chapter on women and philo-Semitism. The conclusion draws attention to the feelings of guilt that are revealed in a number of the texts.




The Yiddish Presence in European Literature


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"Early in the twentieth century, Yiddish, previously stigmatized as a corrupt jargon, came to be recognized as a language in its own right, and one moreover that was already the vehicle for a rich literature. Many writers in other European languages steadily became aware of the status and richness of the Yiddish language, sometimes by encountering Yiddish-speaking communities in Eastern Europe, and they responded to Yiddish language and culture in their own works, while Yiddish writers adopted, and sometimes anticipated, modern trends in other European literatures known to them. The collection of papers in this volume examines some of these fruitful interactions between Yiddish and the European literary tradition, ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present, from France to Lithuania, and from classic modernist writers such as Kafka to Imre Kertesz (Nobel Prize for Literature, 2002). With the contributions: Gilles Rozier- 'When Purim-shpiler meets Columbine': Characters of Commedia dell'arte and Purimshpil in the Works of Moyshe Broderzon David Bellos- In the Worst Possible Taste: Romain Gary's Dance of Genghis Cohn Florian Krobb- 'Muthwillige Faschingstracht': The Presence of Yiddish in Nineteenth-Century German Literature Ritchie Robertson- Kafka's Encounter with the Yiddish Theatre David Groiser- Translating Yiddish: Martin Buber and David Pinski Mikhail Krutikov- Yiddish Author as Cultural Mediator: Meir Wiener's Unpublished Novel David Midgley- The Romance of the East: Encounters of German-Jewish Writers with Yiddish-Speaking Communities, 1916-27 PolO Dochartaigh - Intimacy and Alienation: Yiddish in the Works of Jurek Becker Peter Sherwood- 'Living through Something': Notes on the Work of Imre Kertesz Joseph Sherman- Bergelson and Chekhov: Convergences and Departures Gennady Estraikh- Shmuel Gordon: A Yiddish Writer in 'the Ocean of Russian Literature'"




Wilhelm Raabe


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The book is divided into three parts: an overview of Raabc's career, his problems with the public, and the early reception history that did so much to damage his reputation; thematic analyses that seek to release him from received opinions concerning the nature and quality of his oeuvre by exhibiting his versatility and polyperspectivism; and interpretations of individual works. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




Das Literarische Echo


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