Dan Miron―widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on modern Jewish literatures―begins this study by surveying and critiquing previous attempts to define a common denominator unifying the various modern Jewish literatures. He argues that these prior efforts have all been trapped by the need to see these literatures as a continuum. Miron seeks to break through this impasse by acknowledging discontinuity as the staple characteristic of modern Jewish writing. These literatures instead form a complex of independent, yet touching, components related through contiguity. From Continuity to Contiguity offers original insights into modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literatures, including a new interpretation of Franz Kafka's place within them and discussions of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Akhad ha'am, M. Y. Berditshevsky, Kh. N. Bialik, and Y. L. Peretz.

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture)

Literature & Fiction

Miron, Dan

History & Criticism

Stanford University Press

In an exposition of writer S.Y. Abramovitsh, this work shows the symbolic importance of his central character, Mendele the Bookseller, and explores the history of Yiddish fiction in Russia during the 19th century.

A Traveler Disguised : The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century

Schocken Books

In an exposition of writer S.Y. Abramovitsh, this work shows the symbolic importance of his central character, Mendele the Bookseller, and explores the history of Yiddish fiction in Russia during the 19th century.

A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)

Syracuse University Press

This essay chronicles and analyzes the rise and fall of the prophetic poem in modern Hebrew literature. While focusing on H.N. Bialik's contribution, it considers the historical, literary and artistic factors influencing the fate of the prophetic poem from the late 1890s.

H. N. Bialik and the Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry (The B.G. Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies)

The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)

This volume - a sequel to the author's A traveler disguised - further develops the analysis of the fictionality and aesthetic autonomy of the classics of Yiddish fiction. The essays in this work concentrate on the artistic reconstruction of the world.

The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka's Jewishness (Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature)

The Animal in the Synagogue explores Franz Kafka’s sense of being a Jew in the modern world and its literary and linguistic ramifications. It falls into two parts. The first is organized around the theme of Kafka’s complex and often self-derogatory understanding and assessment of his own Jewishness and of the place the modern Jew occupies in “the abyss of the world” (Martin Buber). That part is based on a close reading of Kafka’s correspondence with his Czech lover, Milena Jesenska, and on a meticulous analysis, thematic, stylistic, and structural, of Kafka’s only short story touching openly and directly upon Jewish social and ritual issues, and known as “In Our Synagogue” (the title—not by the author). In both the letters and the short story images of small animals—repulsive, dirty, or otherwise objectionable—are used by Kafka as means of exploring his own manhood and the Jewish tradition at large as he understood it. The second part of the book focuses on Kafka’s place within the complex of Jewish writing of his time in all its three linguistic forms: Hebrew writing (essentially Zionist), Yiddish writing (essentially nationalistic but not committed to Zionism), and the writing, like his, in non-Jewish languages (mainly German) and within the non-Jewish religious and artistic traditions which inhered in them. The essay deals in detail with Kafka’s responses to contemporary Jewish literatures, and his pessimistic evaluation of those literatures’ potential. Essentially, Kafka doubted the sheer possibility of a genuine and culturally tenable compromise (let alone synthesis) between Jewishness and modernity. The book deals with topics and some texts that the flourishing, ever expanding Kafka scholarship has either neglected or misunderstood because most scholars had no real background in either Hebrew or Yiddish studies, and were unable to grasp the nuances and subtle intentions in Kafka’s attitudes toward modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and their paragons, such as the major Zionist Hebrew poet H.N. Bialik or the Yiddish master Sholem Aleichem.

Lexington Books

The Animal in the Synagogue explores Franz Kafka's sense of being a Jew in the modern world and its literary and linguistic ramifications. It falls into two parts. The first is organized around the theme of Kafka's complex and often self-derogatory understanding and assessment of his own Jewishness and of the place the modern Jew occupies in "the abyss of the world" (Martin Buber). That part is based on a close reading of Kafka's correspondence with his Czech lover, Milena Jesenska, and on a meticulous analysis, thematic, stylistic, and structural, of Kafka's only short story touching openly and directly upon Jewish social and ritual issues, and known as "In Our Synagogue" (the title--not by the author). In both the letters and the short story images of small animals--repulsive, dirty, or otherwise objectionable--are used by Kafka as means of exploring his own manhood and the Jewish tradition at large as he understood it.The second part of the book focuses on Kafka's place within the complex of Jewish writing of his time in all its three linguistic forms: Hebrew writing (essentially Zionist), Yiddish writing (essentially nationalistic but not committed to Zionism), and the writing, like his, in non-Jewish languages (mainly German) and within the non-Jewish religious and artistic traditions which inhered in them. The essay deals in detail with Kafka's responses to contemporary Jewish literatures, and his pessimistic evaluation of those literatures' potential. Essentially, Kafka doubted the sheer possibility of a genuine and culturally tenable compromise (let alone synthesis) between Jewishness and modernity.The book deals with topics and some texts that the flourishing, ever expanding Kafka scholarship has either neglected or misunderstood because most scholars had no real background in either Hebrew or Yiddish studies, and were unable to grasp the nuances and subtle intentions in Kafka's attitudes toward modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and their paragons, such as the major Zionist Hebrew poet H.N. Bialik or the Yiddish master Sholem Aleichem.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

The Scholarly essays contained in this book by the renowned literary scholar and critic Professor Dan Miron, focus on the sense of national mission of modern Hebrew poetry. It also includes comprehensive introductory monographs on the poetry of Bialik, Greenberg and Nathan Zach, along with a general introduction in which each of the issues discussed in the various essays finds its proper historical place.

The Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry

Toby Press

Bodedim be-moʻadam: Li-deyoḳnah shel ha-republiḳah ha-sifrutit ha-ʻIvrit bi-teḥilat ha-meʼah ha-ʻeśrim (Sifriyat ofaḳim) (Hebrew Edition)

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See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miron, Dan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Miron, Dan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miron, Dan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture)

A Traveler Disguised : The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century

A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)

H. N. Bialik and the Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry (The B.G. Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies)

The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)

The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)

The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka's Jewishness (Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature)

The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka's Jewishness (Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature)

The Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry

Bodedim be-moʻadam: Li-deyoḳnah shel ha-republiḳah ha-sifrutit ha-ʻIvrit bi-teḥilat ha-meʼah ha-ʻeśrim (Sifriyat ofaḳim) (Hebrew Edition)