Description
Book SynopsisIn her penetrating new study, Na'ama Rokem observes that prose writingmore than poetry, drama, or other genrescame to signify a historic rift that resulted in loss and disenchantment. In Prosaic Conditions, Rokem treats prose as a signifying practicethat is, a practice that creates meaning. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prose emerges in competition with other existing practices, specifically, the practice of performance. Using Zionist literature as a test case, Rokem examines the ways in which Zionist authors put prose to use, both as a concept and as a literary mode. Writing prose enables these authors to grapple with historical, political, and spatial transformations and to understand the interrelatedness of all of these changes.
Table of ContentsPreface One: Prose Regnant: World, State and Subject in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics Two: Heinrich Heine, Explorer of the Current Prosaic Condition Three: Meditated Situatedness in the Reception of Heinrich Heine Four: Theodor Herzl’s Technocratic World-Making in Prose Five: Haim Nahman Bialik’s Icy River of Prose Six: Heine and the Israeli Novel Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography
