Abstract

During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why. These outsiders went on to have an enormous impact on late 20th-century British literary culture. What was this impact? Why in the last third of the 20th century? Why did British literary culture become so much more receptive to critics like George Steiner, Gabriel Josipovici, Martin Esslin and SS Prawer and to a new canon of continental Jewish writers? The obstacles to Jewish refugee critics were formidable. Yet their work on writers like Kafka, Brecht and Paul Celan, and thinkers like Heidegger and Lukacs had a huge impact. They also broke the post-war silence about the Holocaust and moved the Jewish Bibl from the margins of English-speaking culture.

Highlights

  • During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why

  • Errata (Steiner 1997), George Steiner describes calling on the Oxford don Humphry House: Shortly before my doctoral viva, I called on House

  • What happened over the twenty years is that a small group of Jewish critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why

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Summary

Introduction

During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why. Jewish refugee critics and the British academic world, and now. What happened over the twenty years is that a small group of Jewish critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why.

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