Description
Book SynopsisIn the Russian Empire of the 1870s and 1880s, while intellectuals and politicians furiously debated the Jewish Question, more and more acculturating Jews, who dressed, spoke, and behaved like non-Jews, appeared in real life and in literature. This book examines stories about Jewish assimilation by four authors: Grigory Bogrov, a Russian Jew; Eliza Orzeszkowa, a Polish Catholic; and Nikolai Leskov and Anton Chekhov, both Eastern Orthodox Russians. Safran introduces the English-language reader to works that were much discussed in their own time, and she situates Jewish and non-Jewish writers together in the context they shared.
For nineteenth-century writers and readers, successful fictional characters were types, literary creations that both mirrored and influenced the trajectories of real lives. Stories about Jewish assimilators and converts often juxtaposed two contrasting types: the sincere reformer or true convert who has experienced a complete transformation, and the secre
Trade Review
"Intelligently and creatively, Safran compares closely the work of the Jewish author, Grigory Bogrov; the Polish author, Eliza Orzeszkowa; and the Russian writers Nikolai Leskov and Anton Chekhov with characterizations of Jews found in Russian letters throughout the whole of the century. In doing so, she demonstrates a familiarity and comfort with both critical themes of pre-Soviet Russian literature and literary criticism and with the broader context of Jewish life in the empire. Accordingly, her work is of genuine interest to students of Russian literature as well as for those committed to the investigation of both Jewish and Russian cultural history in the Tsarist empire." -- The Russian Review
"Writ[ten] in a clear, engaging and distinctive style. . . . [Safran] shares her insights on many important aspects of Jewish identity, issues of national identity, acculturation, assimilation, conversion, and anti-Semitism, among others, while she studies her four writers and their literary milieu. For academic libraries." -- Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter
"[Safran's] work makes a serious contribution to our understanding of the complex nexus of Jew and Gentile in late Imperial Russia . . . .[It] should be read by anyone interested in the 'Jewish question,' national identities, and literature in the late Russian Empire. " -- Canadian Slavonic Papers
Table of Contents
Illustrations A note on transliteration Introduction 1. An unprecedented type of human being Grigory Bogrov 2. The nation and the wide world Eliza Orzeszkowa 3. Jew as text, Jew as reader Nikolai Leskov 4. Mutable, permutable, approximate, and relative Anton Chekhov Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.
