Description
Book SynopsisThis tale of great achievements and great disappointments offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between scholarship and political sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Lazăr Șăineanu (1859-1934), linguist and folklorist, was a pioneer in his native Romania, seeking out the popular elements in culture along with high literary ones. He was among the first to publish a study of Yiddish as a genuine language, and he uncovered Turkish features in Romanian language and customs. He also made an index of hundreds of Romanian folktales. Yet when he sought Romanian citizenship and a professorship, he was blocked by powerful figures who thought Jews could not be Romanians and who fancied the origins of Romanian culture to be wholly Latin. Faced with anti-Semitism, some of his friends turned to Zionism. Instead he tried baptism, which brought him only mockery and shame.
Hoping to find a polity to which he could belong, Șăineanu moved with his family to Paris in 1900 and became Lazare Sainéan. There he made innovative studies of French popular speech and slang, culminating in his great work on the language of Rabelais. Once again, he was contributing to the development of a national tongue. Even then, while welcomed by literary scholars, Sainéan was unable to get a permanent university post. Though a naturalized citizen of France, he felt himself a foreigner, an “intruder,” into his old age.
Trade Review"Davis quotes Sainéan’s own assessment of his situation at the end of his long career: ‘indeed, here, in regard to social relations, I am always still “the intruder”’. One of the virtues of her book is that she does not seek to hide her subject’s foibles—including a somewhat thin-skinned insistence on his own rightness, a certain defiant self-regard, a pragmatism that didn’t always do him much good. Rather, Davis goes constantly in search of more complex motives behind Sainéan’s scholarly preoccupations and life choices: this renders us a very human figure, whose story serves as a litmus for the atmosphere of the times through which he lived." (The review is complemented by the author's response.) https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2472 -- Alex Drace-Francis * Reviews in History *
Table of ContentsNote on Transliteration
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: ROMANIA
Early Years: Studies and Friendships
The Field of Linguistics
1. FIRST PUBLICATIONS
The Science of Judaism: Advancing Emancipation
Semasiology
Paris, Gaston Paris, and the Jours D’emprunt
Leipzig and the neogrammarians
2. RESEARCH ON YIDDISH
The Dialectological Study of Judeo-German
Spreading The Word on Yiddish
B.p. Hasdeu, anti-semitism and jewish relations
3. UNIVERSITY LECTURES AND NEW BOOKS
V. A. Urechiǎ and the first rejection of naturalization
Favorable Reviews and Marriage
4. BASMELE ROMANE
The Basmele Wins a Prize
Second Defeat of Request For Naturalization
Self-Defense and Studies in Folklore
5. THE DICŤIONAR UNIVERSAL
Non-Zionist Jew and His Circle of Friends
Paris, London: Gaster and Zionism
Paris: Nordau and Zionism
The Rejection of Zionism, The Dreyfus Affair
Baptism And Its Consequences
6. THE ORIENTAL INFLUENCE ON THE ROMANIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Șǎineanu and Other Jews
The Last Months: Publication and Defeat
Repairing And Describing His Life: The Philological Career
PART TWO: FRANCE
The New Emigré
7. LIVING AND MAKING A LIVING; SOME TRANSLATIONS
Judeo-German for The French Scholar
8. THE POPULAR LANGUAGES OF FRANCE
Rabelais
Les Sources Indigènes and Disappointment
9. SUMMING UP
Languages And “The People” In The 1920s and 1930s
Two Jewish Critics on Sainéan’s Life
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index
