Recent Critical Approaches to the Work of Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Review Article

Abstract

The early twenty-first century has been very productive in terms of scholarship on the Yiddish writer and Nobel Prizewinner Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91). This review article discusses two major anthologies of Bashevis criticism, two monographs exploring Bashevis's life and works, a bibliography comprising the years 1960-91, and an article, published in Yiddish in "Forverts" in New York, which presents the discovery of Bashevis's earliest published writings in Biłgoraj. The review argues that Bashevis scholarship should be based on the original Yiddish text of his works, even though he himself authorized the standard English translations of his œuvre.