Robert Alter Research Articles

A Literary Common Ground

A Literary Common Ground Lee Rust Brown Let me make note of a few things that have occurred to me during this conference. Some of these will be observations; some will be practical inferences. One of them, though, involves the crossing of an expectation, or maybe a fear, I had brought with me to Minneapolis. Since this has to do with the whole tone of the conference, we might as well begin with it. It, of course, was the question of the polemical nature of this gathering. Would this conference be diagnostic and denunciatory in nature, or would it seek to start something truly new? Certainly we all feel the need of something new—not new, either, in the sense that movements or ideological positions claim to be new, but in the sense of a fresh gathering of common attention in the place where literature is, the place where each of us who loves literature already goes alone. This would be a possibility for something original rather than just another novelty—which makes the question of polemics all the more urgent. An association that founded itself in complaint would be only one more identity-group making a virtue out of its grudge. And the grudge, in that case, would have been a sad reflex of feeling superseded and powerless. But where have the polemics against current orthodoxies been? I am delighted not to have heard them in any strenuous capacity. Even their relative absence hasn’t commanded any extended attention, and that may be an even more telling point. I take this to be partly the result of foresight and good sense. But the clean air here has been more than a reward for our mutual constraint. Instead, it seems evidence of the fact [End Page 193] that, when literature occupies our attention, there is no need for self-defense. Justice, or justification, happens by itself when we “do our own work,” as Socrates recommended. What is our own work, then? This association has made a point, it seems, of declining to prescribe what it should be. The only thing we are absolutely sure of is that its subject is literature, and that its standards and rewards should be of a literary nature. From there the field opens up—and this conference has succeeded in keeping it open in some very concrete ways. Let’s think briefly about the two panels we attended yesterday. The morning panel on “Intellectual Craftsmanship” seemed unified in its concern with the disciplined ways by which we commit ourselves to literary experience. Literature itself, as well as what we do with it, teaches us this discipline, which is “aesthetic” in every sense of that word. Roger Shattuck set the tone when he described the discipline of reading as an issue of preparation and assimilation on the one hand, and as a kind of complete perceptual openness on the other. Such openness, in our normal experience, allows us to be surprised, to see actual things, perhaps, instead of their institutional categories. But literature also requires that we craft our receptivity. The surprises we prepare ourselves to undergo are achieved breakthroughs, which makes them no less unpredictable but all the more deeply affecting. Criticism cultivates such surprising experience. (I think experience is the crucial word, by the way, since everyone on that first panel seemed to be devoted to a kind of free empiricism.) The spectacular moments of visionary power that Robert Alter isolated in Dickens are places that startle and disturb us—and we track our own surprise, and intensify it, when we look closely at how those dark places of power emerge from Dickens’s refiguring of a world where darkness otherwise tends toward an entirely unredeemable opacity. We have to read “synesthetically,” as Shattuck says, “with both eyes open,” to let ourselves be for a moment blinded by such literary places. Once again, the discipline of reading—devotedly and resistantly—frees us for the achieved experience. Slowing down, in Sven Birkerts’s sense of “retardation and deceleration,” is precisely a matter of stepping into a field of experience shaped (or, in an auditory sense, fostered and conserved) by the special demands of literature. It...

Jewish Self-Hatred in Malamud's "The Jewbird"

Jewbird is a fable in which a black bird named Schwartz flies through open window of the Cohens' New York City penthouse apartment. Schwartz explains that he is running from anti-Semeets. Harry Cohen, a frozen food salesman, persecutes and torments the Jewbird, who befriends Maurie, the family's young son. In the dead of winter, Cohen physically throws out the bird, whose mangled carcass Maurie finds in the spring. In tears, Maurie asks who could have killed Mr. Schwartz. His mother answers, Anti-Semeets. Ruth Wisse and Sidney have seen Jewbird as Malamud's Everyman, a displaced loner, and as an exemplary image of the Malamudian victim...constantly pursued by anti-Semites and fate...opportunist and saint who tests...the humanity and compassion of others (Wisse 110, Richman 126). On a broader scale, Robert Alter has written that imprisonment is Malamud's central metaphor for Jewishness (210). I would like to suggest that imprisonment here has a roommate-tenancy. For tenancy corresponds uncannily to the Jews' status in America, if not throughout the diaspora. The only home that Jews own is Israel. After two thousand years of being tenants in other people's lands, in other people's cities, in other people's buildings, Jews have come to internalize a tenant mentality: follow the rules, don't make waves, or you will be evicted. Malamud's novel The Tenants incorporates the metaphor of tenancy not only into Jewish/Black relations, but into the artist's need for approval and acceptance. Harry Lesser's obsession with getting published (i.e., approval and acceptance by the establishment) parallels the Jewish obsession with wanting to be accepted into WASP society. (It might be worth noting that Lesser's inability to finish his novel bespeaks a subconscious need to delay the final judgment. Don't decide whether or not to reject me; I'm not finished yet.)

Hebrew and Modernity (review)

Book Reviews 105 really mean? Were they fluent? Or did they know to repeat. a few memorized phrases? Did they actually use Hebrew in daily life as a matter of course?) The book offers many suggestions for future study, including sources. Eliezer Ben Yehudah's actual contribution to the revival is reassessed. While a failure on one level-his use of Hebrew remained artificial and imposed, and was limited mostly to his family and a few followers-he succeeded as a symbol for the propaganda, and as proof for the possibility of speaking Hebrew. Ben Yehudah's failure is explained by the difficulty of "changing an individual's base language to a language that is not yet the base language ofany society" (p. 138). This was the accomplishment of the second aliyah: creating the necessary public framework to expand the revival beyond the range of a few individuals. Unlike the history of the development of most languages, patterns of Hebrew dialogue were invented by literature, and spelling was stabilized before pronunciation. Harshav also clarifies the choice of "Sephardi" pronunciation, pointing out that Israeli Hebrew is actually based on the lowest common denominator of rival variations: the combination of Ashkenazi consonants and Sephardi vowels. The revival of Hebrew is shown to be intertwined with so many historical and sociological factors, so tenuous that the myth breaking only increases the wonder. The last chapter before the concluding summaries-"the nature of Israeli Hebrew"-offers many topics for future research and, as before, suggestions for source material. After reading this book, one can only hope that these suggestions will be followed by researchers with similarly broad and well-informed perspectives. Nancy E. Berg Jewish & Near Eastern Studies Washington University in St. Louis Hebrew and Modernity, by Robert Alter. Bloomington: Indiana U)liversity Press, 1994. 192 pp. $27.95 (c); $10.95 (P). Zionism not only produced a Jewish state, it established Hebrew as a medium of high literary creativity. In an outstanding collection of essays called Hebrew and Modernity, Robert Alter explains the complex ancestry of modern Hebrew literature, tracing its classical and religious roots as well as its connections to the contemporary political and social struggles waged by Jews across international borders and in their several vernacu- 106 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 lars. Sensitive to the debts owed by Hebrew writers to humanistic developments in the non-Jewish world, Alter, nevertheless, focuses his attention on the process by which Jewish experiences produced a vocabulary and grammar sufficient for imaginative expression and creative narrative. This book is a second-order study, a compilation of essays which examines recent poetry anthologies, important novelists, and significant fiction. Many, but not all, of these essays have already appeared in print, but together they explain how Hebrew literature was self-consciously created. For over a century, Hebrew fiction has probed the characteristics of Jewish identity, the nature of the Jewish family, and the meaning of communal suffering. Its existence and status are taken for granted, certainly a measure of its high achievement but not of the long and difficult struggle such productivity demanded. Although Jews have had the opportunity to confront both radical evil and sublime good in history, the Hebrew literary enterprise was not primarily built by addressing the spiritual questions such awesome encounters provoked. This literature was woven out of an analysis of the mundane and the ordinary. As modernity offeredJews economic opportunities and political rights, it also splintered them into fragments. Through literature, Jews attempted to understand the circumstances of their exile and the consequences of their dispersion. Jews used Hebrew literature to explain their poverty, examine the structure of their faith, and articulate their relationship to each other, to their past, and to the prospects offered by the non-Jewish world. Appreciating, if not worshipping, the values of modernity, Hebrew writers turned idioms drawn from ancient texts into concepts describing their own communal inadequacies and emotional conflicts. Familiar idioms drawn from sacred texts described a turmoil engendered by the great cultural divide between traditional Jewish and modern non-Jewish societies. Not only did the newly published Hebrew books differ from earlier Hebrew literary genres, they were also hostile to many of...

Interpretations of the Old Testament in Modern Fiction

Abstract In what way do artists and novelists who have re‐presented Old Testament narratives differ from biblical critics who seek to explain the texts of Scripture? This paper begins with a brief examination of a Rembrandt etching and the way in which it diverges from the text upon which it is based. Why does the artist change the narrative shape of the Bible? I then proceed to discuss the work of a critic, Robert Alter, who has read the text of the Old Testament as “literature”, and compare him with writers of fiction who have dealt with the same texts — in the first instance considering Thomas Mann and his great work Joseph and His Brothers. The second part of the paper examines a number of novelists who have taken biblical themes — Julian Barnes, Joseph Heller, Torgny Lindgren and Moelwyn Merchant. I will suggest that what they offer is a tragic element which is lost in the biblical texts insofar as they are configured by the history of salvation and its theology. Even for great kings like David, “the...

Recurrence in Book of Mormon Narratives

Abstract Repetition appears purposefully within Book of Mormon narratives as a principle of reinforcement and confirmation. It seems that every important action, event, or character is repeated in the Book of Mormon. These repetitions emphasize the law of witnesses at work within the book (e.g., "in the mouth of three witnesses shall these things be established"; Ether 5:4). Further, they underscore the relevance of one character or action to people living in a different time, and they link narratives together with what Robert Alter calls "type-scenes." Analyzed in detail as particularly striking are three-fold repetitions in Nephi’s task to retrieve the brass plates and repetition of the word power in the missionary endeavor of the sons of Mosiah. Larger repeated narratives treat escape and travel to a promised land; repentance; and the nature, rise, and effect of secret combinations.

German Question -- Jewish Question: Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner

In this compelling narrative of antisemitism in German thought, Paul proposes a fresh view of the topic. Beginning with an examination of the attitudes of Martin Luther, he challenges distinctions between theologically derived (medieval) and secular, racial (modern) antisemitism, arguing that there is an unbroken chain of antisemitic feeling between the two periods. Rose persuasively demonstrates that for almost all [German revolutionary thinkers of the right and left], the German Question was ensnarled in the Jewish Question, and that a deep kinship between left and right was expressed in the loaded opposition between Deutschtum and Judentum.--Robert Alter, New Republic The suggestion of the title of Paul Rose's imposing book that Kant, the patron saint of liberal humanitarianism, was in fact the initiator of an important, and perhaps the crucial, strand in German antisemitism may come as something of a shock. But for this and for a number of other, more comprehensive, propositions, Paul Lawrence has assembled a powerful, if rather single-minded case.--Anthony Quinton, New York Review of Books An intensely interesting, learned, and combative book.--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Times Literary Supplement

‘No King in Israel’: Narrative Criticism and Judges 17-21

Scholars such as Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg have produced suggestive interpretations of sections of Old Testament narrative. This article applies their techniques to the stories in Judges 17-21, and argues that these techniques yield a coherent interpretation of the chapters, paying attention to features such as repetition, narrative analogy, and the use of narration and dialogue. It subsequently deals with some implications of this interpretation, according to which the narrator takes a negative view of pre-monarchic Israel.

Interpretations of the old testament in modern fiction

Abstract In what way do artists and novelists who have re‐presented Old Testament narratives differ from biblical critics who seek to explain the texts of Scripture? This paper begins with a brief examination of a Rembrandt etching and the way in which it diverges from the text upon which it is based. Why does the artist change the narrative shape of the Bible? I then proceed to discuss the work of a critic, Robert Alter, who has read the text of the Old Testament as “literature”, and compare him with writers of fiction who have dealt with the same texts — in the first instance considering Thomas Mann and his great work Joseph and His Brothers. The second part of the paper examines a number of novelists who have taken biblical themes — Julian Barnes, Joseph Heller, Torgny Lindgren and Moelwyn Merchant. I will suggest that what they offer is a tragic element which is lost in the biblical texts insofar as they are configured by the history of salvation and its theology. Even for great kings like David, “the...

"Not in Heaven": Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative (review)

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 187 Reviews assumption of linguistic influence must not be made too quickly, particularly given the hostilities between the two linguistic communities. The partial nature of the evidence that Rendsburg has at his disposal frequently becomes apparent. For instance, his assumption that forms which appear in later dialects of Aramaic would also appear in Early Aramaic if there were more of it (p. 6, n. 25) mayor may not be true. The same holds for the assumptions that R. S. Hanson's evidence for a close relation between Phoenicia and northern Israel in the Persian and Hellenistic periods (Tyrian Influence in the Upper Galilee [Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1980) also holds for the earlier period (pp. 6-7, n. 28). That these sorts of moves were often necessary for Rendsburg to have produced the present volume is not a criticism of his work so much as a recognition of the subject's difficulty. Indeed, the author is to be commended for his initiative in a difficult field. He has broadened the data-base for attempting to distinguish Israelian and Judahite Hebrew. An appendix which summarizes his results (pp. 105-107) is quite useful. Walter Bodine Dallas, TX 75214 "NOT IN HEAVEN": COHERENCE AND COMPLEXITY IN BIBLICAL NARRATIVE. Jason P. Rosenblatt and Joseph C. Sitterson, Jr., eds. Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature. Pp. 262. Indianapolis: Indiana University, 1991. Cloth, $39.95; Paper, $14.95. In introducing this collection of ten essays originally presented as conference papers on "The Bible and Contemporary Literary Theory," the editors explain the book's title and comment on the contributions of the various essayists to the discussion of coherence and complexity in biblical narrative. The title "Not in Heaven", taken from Deuteronomy 30:12, reflects both the autonomy of the text, by virtue of the scriptures' own statement that the word of God no longer resides in heaven but on earth, and the derivative nature of that authority, by virtue of the quotation marks signifying the scriptures' dependence on God's dynamic and disruptive revelation. Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 188 Reviews This essentially theological debate surfaces in biblical studies as disagreement among literary analysts over the coherence in narrative point of view. The editors' introduction outlines usefully the major issues and basic positions of the essayists. They summarize: Alter, Sternberg, Nohrnberg, and Drury all assume or discover coherent and unitary narratives and narrators; Berlin, Levinson, and Sanders explicitly or implicitly critique this assumption; Trible, Schwartz, and McBride assume or discover its opposite. (p. 5) Robert Alter's eloquent and lucid essay wrestles with the unique nature of the scriptures and the attendant question of the validity of literary (aesthetic) analysis. He affirms Harold Fisch's argument of a "poetics of violence" whereby the biblical text seeks to reject smoothness in favor of discontinuity and violence. Without claiming positive identification of the Bible's distinctiveness, Alter points to the singular content of the Bible and the writers' accommodation to and confrontation with that unique content. He claims a conscious playfulness on the part of b,iblical writers intended to challenge accepted ideology. Unremitting in his attention to details, Meir Sternberg scrutinizes the dialogue in the Genesis 23 account of Abraham's purchase of Machpelah. His attempt to account for every indirection in the double-talk leads Sternberg to construct a coordinate of three sets of motives for the Hittite responses. He insists that indirection in biblical dialogue (and narration) intends to cause the reader to stumble, even wander, rather than seize the import of the text immediately. The two "self-sovereign" characters of the Hebrew Bible, Joseph and David, interest James Nohrnberg, who claims that their unique complexity in biblical literature results from their pivotal positions in the national history. Nohrnberg detects an authorial effort to parallel these two lives and the symbolized divisions of history between tribalism and state government . Joseph and David represent the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, respectively. While the mode of knowledge (revealed secrets) is common to both stories, their modes of coherence differ. John Drury's wry style enlivens his ingenious study of a passage from Mark. Assuming Mark's original readers to have...

The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory

On biblical criticism, Regina Schwartz dealing with women - daughters in the book of judges, Mieke Bal on prophetic stammering, Herbert Marks Joseph's bones and the resurrection of the text, Regina Schwartz space and time in biblical narrative, Meir Sternberg Sodom as Nexus - the web of design in biblical narrative, Robert Alter the keeping of Nahor - the etiology of biblical election, James Norjrnberg the hermeneutics of Midrash, Gerald L.Bruns the song of songs - lock or key?, Daniel Boyarin J.L.Austin and the book of Jonah, Terry Eagleton interpretative narrative, Paul Ricoeur the gospel in Greco-Roman culture, Mary Ann Tolbert Paul and Marxism, Sheila Briggs.

The Art of Biblical Poetry. By Robert Alter. Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1990. Pp. 228. £11.95.

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Not in heaven: coherence and complexity in biblical narrative

Acknowledgments Introduction Jason P. Rosenblatt and Joseph C. Sitterson, Jr. Biblical Imperatives and Literary Play Robert Alter Double Cave, Double Talk: The Indirections of Biblical Dialogue Meir Sternberg Princely Characters James C. Nohrnberg Understanding the Bread: Disruption and Aggregation, Secrecy and Revelation in MarkOs Gospel Joh Drury Literary Exegesis of Biblical Narrative: Between Poetics and Hermeneutics Adele Berlin The Right Chorale: From the Poetics to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible Bernard M. Levinson The Integrity of Biblical Pluralism James A. Sanders Genesis 22: The Sacrifice of Sarah Phyllis Trible The Histories of David: Biblical Scholarship and Biblical Stories Regina M. Schwartz Esther Passes: Chiasm, Lex Talio, and Money in the Book of Esther William T. McBride Notes Contributors

Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner.

In this compelling narrative of antisemitism in German thought, Paul proposes a fresh view of the topic. Beginning with an examination of the attitudes of Martin Luther, he challenges distinctions between theologically derived (medieval) and secular, racial (modern) antisemitism, arguing that there is an unbroken chain of antisemitic feeling between the two periods. Rose persuasively demonstrates that for almost all [German revolutionary thinkers of the right and left], the German Question was ensnarled in the Jewish Question, and that a deep kinship between left and right was expressed in the loaded opposition between Deutschtum and Judentum.--Robert Alter, New Republic The suggestion of the title of Paul Rose's imposing book that Kant, the patron saint of liberal humanitarianism, was in fact the initiator of an important, and perhaps the crucial, strand in German antisemitism may come as something of a shock. But for this and for a number of other, more comprehensive, propositions, Paul Lawrence has assembled a powerful, if rather single-minded case.--Anthony Quinton, New York Review of Books An intensely interesting, learned, and combative book.--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Times Literary Supplement

The Bible in Bloom

tinues, the Bible, largely through the efforts of literary rather than biblical critics, may indeed regain its dubious status as a best-seller. story begins in the seventies. Commentary published several articles on a literary approach to Scripture by the American critic Robert Alter. They led to a book, Art of Biblical Narrative (1981). Subsequently appeared a companion, Art of Biblical Poetry (1985). Next Alter collab orated with the British scholar Frank Kermode to edit Literary Guide to the Bible (1987). Kermode had already written about the gospels (The Genesis of Secrecy, 1979). In Literary Guide, biblical and secular authori ties from the United States, England, and Israel discussed individual books and general topics. same year American Jewish authors produced a collection of essays entitled Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible. David Rosenberg, later to translate the book of J from Hebrew, edited it. Harold Bloom, ostensibly writing on Exodus, gave a synopsis of the ancient author J, an earnest of his book to come. Gabriel Josipovici, a British literary critic, then took another direction. In Book of God: A Response to the Bible (1988) he explored the grand design of Scripture, acknowledging that the Canadian professor Northrop Frye had already pursued a parallel path in Great Code: Bible and (1982). Last year Frye completed a sequel, Words with Power: Being a Second Study of The Bible and Literature (1990). Book ofj now joins this enterprise. Of all the works, it has received the greatest public attention. Unlike the others, it enjoys a flamboyant style, an anti-religious bias, outlandish generalizations, and the particular belief that a woman wrote the document called J. These distinctive fea tures provoke spirited discussion from varied perspectives. This essay reviews Book ofj from within biblical scholarship. To be

The Re-Humanization of Art: Pictorial Aesthetics in John Fowles's The Ebony Tower and Daniel Martin

The Re-Humanization of Art:Pictorial Aesthetics in John Fowles's The Ebony Tower and Daniel Martin Lynne S. Vieth (bio) "Art is a form of speech. Speech must be based on human needs, not abstract theories of grammar. Or anything but the spoken word. The real word." —Henry Breasley in "The Ebony Tower" The opposition between visual and narrative representations of reality has remained a constant theme in the fiction of John Fowles, whose comments in essays and interviews have encouraged the critical impulse to expose the vices of the one and extol the virtues of the other. Fowles has all along implied, however, that his aesthetic principles cannot be so simply defined.1 In later nonfiction works such as Islands (1978), The Tree (1979), and Land (1985), his interest in reconciling image to word [End Page 217] is readily apparent in his commentary on a certain mode of landscape photography, whereas his more recent fiction equally attests to the ambiguous overlapping of visual and narrative art. Robert Alter's and Katharine Tarbox's conflicting accounts of the opening chapter of Daniel Martin (1977) provide a case in point: does "The Harvest" reproduce a primarily cinematic (Tarbox) or narrative (Alter) vision of nature? However one may read this scenario, it is well to remember that the novel culminates with the description of a Rembrandt self-portrait—as if this particular genre of visual art offered the unique possibility of mediating between filmic and narrative representation. I will consider the significance of this allusion at the end of my essay. This location of painting at the intersection of the visual and verbal in Fowles's fiction has gone largely unnoticed by critics, who have over-looked its importance altogether or failed to distinguish its special significance. This is particularly true of The Ebony Tower (1974), in which Fowles frames his collection of tales with two stories that specifically evoke painterly representation. In order to account for Fowles's admission in "A Personal Note" that the working title of the collection was Variations, critics have often focused on elucidating correspondences between the stories, as well as their connections to Fowles's prior fiction. James Baker and Kerry McSweeney demonstrated early on that situations and characters—including painters and students of the art—have been transplanted from Fowles's previous novels to this collection: Breasley's dependence on his muse Diana in "The Ebony Tower," for example, essentially repeats the relationship between Rosetti and Sarah in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), which in turn recalls that between G. P. and Miranda in The Collector (1963). Such thematic variations have caused some to dismiss the title story, as well as the entire collection, in their assessments of Fowles's artistic development;2 but as Frederick Holmes has convincingly shown, repetition of content should induce the reader to look elsewhere for signs of aesthetic innovation. Holmes acknowledges allusions to the history and craft of painting in the title story while exploring the ways in which Fowles's tales displace attention to "metafictional concerns" (25); but betraying the limitations of viewing the collection as a whole, he ignores the painterly discourse in "The Cloud" in favor of focusing on "the story's thematic concern with failures in communication" (36)—the Barthesian topic to which Arnold Davidson does greater justice by discussing this tale alone. [End Page 218] Taking my cue from remarks made by Peter Conradi and John Mills before him,3 I should like to make a stronger claim for the originality of "The Ebony Tower" and "The Cloud" within the evolutionary trajectory of Fowles's fiction. Not only do these stories indicate his increasing preoccupation with the moral implications of representation but they also complicate issues of aesthetic allusiveness and self-referentiality by striving to attain pictorial status. This distinguishes them from their novelistic predecessors, rendering Fowles's insistence that he was experimenting with a new genre—that of the story or nouvelle—significant.4 For his tales are not simply condensed versions of his novels: because of the brevity essential to the story form, it can more readily represent those intensities of imagistic insight associated with visual art. Art historian Svetlana...

The Invention of Hebrew Prose: Modern Fiction and the Language of Realism (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 71 Reviews by Agus' treatment of the tension between Law and Martyrdom (see pp. 45, 186-187, chap. 11) but unconvinced by his effort to integrate other aspects of rabbinic thought (e.g., the long chap. 8 on Repentance and the charismatic figures, chaps. 5-7) into this matrix. Agus is at his best when he probes the depth of a particular religious thought or sentiment (pp. 192, 195). The effort, however, to construct an overall system and the attendant desire to hear and interpret texts in light of that system I felt was less persuasive. This is a handsome volume in a relatively new series and certainly contributes to a heightened sensitivity to hermeneutics and religion. It deserves the attention of scholars in the field. Marc Hirshman University of Haifa Haifa 31999 Israel THE INVENTION OF HEBREW PROSE: MODERN FICTION AND THE LANGUAGE OF REALISM. By Robert Alter. Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. Pp. xi + 122. Seattle: University of Washington, 1988. Cloth, $15.00. In this most brilliant study, Robert Alter traces the emergence of Hebrew language in fiction from the tum of the century to the present. What is remarkable about that emergence, in Europe, is that the language used has no spoken vernacular to support it. There is, however, a one-sided relation between Hebrew literature and its European counterpart as the European models are adapted to the needs of Hebrew fiction. Thus S. Y. Agnon, in the 1920s after a decade-and-a-half of writing midrashic/hassidic parables with a modernistic slant, finally adopted the novel form after having regarded the novel as a non-Hebraic form. The first Hebrew novel was Abraham Mapu's Ahavat Zion ("The Love of Zion") in 1853. Written in a pseudo-euphemistic Hebrew, the reality it depicts is non-referential; it is a romantic tale whose language is a lofty pastiche. One thread followed throughout Alter's study is that of the nusab-the traditional musical mode for chanting prayers in synagogue worship. There are two such modes, an Ashkenazi nusab as well as a Sephardi nusab, each Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 72 Reviews reflecting what might be called a distinct "style:' The creator of what might be called the nusab for modem Hebrew prose is Mendele Macher Sforim (1836-1917). In 1910 the Hebrew poet Bialik (1873-1934) published a definitive article titled Yotzer Hanusab ("Creator of the Nusab"). For Bialik, the nusab is more than a mere style or rhythm; it is a vehicle of expressiveness. Thus the nusab becomes a clearly recognizable use of language as easily adaptable to fiction as to liturgy. Mendele provided a stylistic infrastructure for Hebrew as well as Yiddish literature. Bialik came to see that once the nusab or "convention" was established, one could not conceive of literature without it. Thus the nusab is the idiom of a period, the indicator of its Zeitgeist. Even to challenge the convention, Bialik said, we need a grounding from which to deviate and introduce change. Accordingly, Bialik deplores the reliance on the pasuk, that is, the biblical verse, a reliance that was prevalent in the period before Mendele; and with it he rejects the "mob of words" one finds in that literature, the loose compilation of words that falls apart under any structural scrutiny. What was needed were new patterns allowing for new verbal/emotional combinations. Eventually the euphemistic style disappeared from Hebrew letters, along with the poetasters who could assemble nothing better than shaky verbal edifices. This is why Bialik makes the point that the nusab allows for deeper psychological insight and why he saw Mendele's style as a de novo creation. For his part, Bialik is the creator of the nusab in modem Hebrew poetry; and the praise he showered on Mendele, as the grandfather of both Hebrew and Yiddish prose. could be applied to Bialik as well. The emergence of the nusab, therefore. is marked by the death of the me/itsah. the euphemistic rhetoric of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries . The pitting of fancy against imagination already points to the demise of the meJitsah towards the end of the nineteenth century and...

The Women of Genesis: From Sarah to Potiphar's Wife (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 146 Reviews THE WOMEN OF GENESIS: FROM SARAH TO POTIPHAR'S WIFE. By Sharon Pace Jeansonne. pp. xi + 152. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990. Paper. This book is a very sympathetic reading of the biblical narratives regarding women in Gen 12-50. Jeansonne begins by arguing that "until recently most modem interpreters of the Book of Genesis have displayed patriarchal bias" (p. 1). In particular, previous readers of Genesis have considered women "chiefly in their function of supporting men." Her book is an attempt to correct these previous patriarchal misreadings through focusing on the inherent significance of biblical portraits of women's lives. In order to do this she draws heavily on the work in literary approaches to biblical narrative by Robert Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative) and particularly Meir Sternberg (The Poetics ofBiblical Narrative). Most of the first chapter is useful summary of her methodology, narrative criticism. This includes short, well-written sections on the following topics: characterization and dialogue. perspective and authority. ambiguity and gaps, repetition, combination and sequence of narratives, type scenes and conventions, names and epithets, and diction and setting. Chapters two through eight are each devoted to interpretation of biblical texts regarding women in Genesis: Sarah. the daughters of Lot, Hagar. Rebekah. Rachel and Leah. Dinah, Tamar. and Potiphar's wife. In each case Jeansonne argues that the biblical "narrator" leads the "reader" into a portrait of these women as (1) central and (2) at least as worthy of respect as the men in the story. Sarah. Rebekah, Rachel, Leah. and Tamar emerge as resourceful matriarchs, protectors of the promise, and recipients of God's blessings. Likewise, the narrator portrays Lot's daughters sympathetically , while depicting Lot himself as a brutal and neglectful father. Though Hagar appears in Genesis as the mother of an enemy nation, she is not caricatured, but rather portrayed as a powerless woman receiving divine blessing and protection. Dinah is a central character in a tragic and yet nuanced portrayal of rape and revenge. Even the negative portrayal of Potiphar's wife is partially explained by her status as "foreigner," and its xenophobic tendencies are balanced by the account of Joseph's subsequent marriage to an Egyptian woman, Asenath, the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh. Many interesting readings are interspersed throughout these chapters. For example, Jeansonne radically reinterprets the story of Sarah's laughter at overhearing God's promise that she would have a son (Gen 18:9-15). Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 147 Reviews Many previous interpreters have seen this as a story about Sarah's doubting laughter and her denial of that doubt. Jeansonne (pp. 23-24), however, argues persuasively that when seen in the context of Abraham's prior reception of the promise (Gen 17), this story can be read as God's confrontation of Abraham for failing to tell Sarah of the promise (18:13-14) and Sarah's attempt to defend him (18:15). The above example illustrates some of the possibilities opened up by Jeansonne's decision to read the biblical narratives in their final form. In the above case she coordinates a story traditionally assigned to "J" (Gen 18:9-15) with one assigned to "P" (Gen 17). But such a focus on fmal form is not the only virtue of the readings in the book. Rather, it is full of interesting observations about narrative repetition, gaps, characterization, allusions, and other literary characteristics. Moreover, she judiciously refers to the Hebrew of her passages (transliterated and translated) in order to point out nuances, word-plays, and connections between stories. Finally, her special focus on female characters in their own right makes it possible for her to observe a number of new things about biblical characterizations of women in Gen 12-50. Within the context of that overall positive evaluation, some reservations are in order: (1) The entire book seems built on the presupposition that the Bible can say no wrong about women. As such it is most appropriate for those interpretive contexts where some kind of theological inerrancy of the Bible is presupposed. (2) At a number of points she is only able to secure a reading of these texts as...

The Invention of Hebrew Prose: Modern Fiction and the Language of Realism (review)

Reviewed by: The Invention of Hebrew Prose: Modern Fiction and the Language of Realism Yael S. Feldman Robert Alter . The Invention of Hebrew Prose: Modern Fiction and the Language of Realism. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1988. 122 pp. $15.00. The contemporary study of Hebrew literature, particularly in its modern phases, generally points in two opposite directions: inside and outside. For the "insiders," the miraculous revival of Hebrew in the last two centuries, both as spoken language and as secularized belles lettres, is a totally indigenous business—a sui generis evolution, determined by its own unique laws, that of stylistic and ideological continuities (namely, the consistent reliance on the ancient sources, and the national motivation behind this literary awakening). (As late as 1923, Hebrew poet laureate, H. N. Bialik, admonished a young Hebrew novelist against foreign imports: "One does not draw analogies from one language to another, and certainly not from an Aryan to a Semitic language" [quoted by Alter].) For the "outsiders," the modernization of Hebrew is a case of comparative literature par excellence: conceived and developed in Europe for more than a century before finding a home in the land of Israel, it absorbed the norms and modes of operation of the cultures surrounding it, thereby becoming an intriguing testing ground for issues of polysystemic changes and literary transfer. In either case, what is at the center of attention is language itself, "the story of Hebrew." For the fascinating question is: how was Hebrew transformed from a scriptural idiom to a viable vehicle for the modern experience? And more specifically—in the absence of Hebrew vernacular (a function fulfilled in Europe by Yiddish)—how was the impression of mimetic realism created in Hebrew? To answer this question in English is an almost impossible task, as anyone who has tried to do it can attest. Yet this is precisely what Robert Alter has undertaken in his book, The Invention of Hebrew Prose. Nor should we be surprised: for who would be better suited for this task than an author who introduced the English reader to The Art of Biblical Narrative (and Biblical Poetry)? Indeed, this compact exposition demonstrates the same features that made Alter's studies of biblical art so popular: lucid and accessible prose, even when discussing subject matter most distant from the contemporary (English) reader; a concise historical introduction, both cultural and sociological; a careful selection of "three pivotal moments" in the Europeanization of Hebrew (1886-1930: mainly Mendele, Gnessin, and Fogel); sensitive close readings of hefty passages (deftly translated by the author), in which—and this is crucial—certain key words and structures are highlighted in the original (in transliteration, of course); and finally, the delightful use of cultural analogues, culled from the vast repertory of European (and Anglo-American) literatures. The latter are very helpful in "domesticating" this alien phenomenon, making the "anomaly" or otherness of Hebrew somewhat less daunting. But only somewhat. For linguistically, modern Hebrew presents a greater challenge than the biblical. In fact, it was the very limitations of biblical Hebrew that triggered the reactivation of postbiblical (rabbinic) Hebrew by the moderns. As recent studies (mostly in Hebrew) have demonstrated, it is to the specificity of the latter in diction, syntax, grammar, and tone that Hebrew realism owes its coming into being. Moreover, modern Hebrew in general would be unthinkable without the rich interplay of its historical linguistic layers. Yet English is often at a loss to render these minute diachronic nuances, as Alter repeatedly admits [End Page 692] (this or that stylistic difference is "evident only in Hebrew"). So what is the point of such a detailed exercise in translation? The point is to demonstrate (and here Alter uses the "uniqueness" of Hebrew as an investigative deautomatization, the way Russian Formalists used Sterne's Tristram Shandy) that the original question, the one motivating most studies of Hebrew modernism, is no question at all; that the assumption that a vernacular is a necessary condition for the creation of "realism" is a fallacy, based on erroneous "mimetic" expectations. "[T]he illusion of mimesis," he reminds us, "involves more working against the grain of ordinary language than we are willing to admit," and...

Tobias George Smollett (review)

168 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Robert Donald Spector. Tobias George Smollett. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989 (Twayne's English Authors Series), xvii + 155pp. This is an "updated edition" of Spector's earlier volume on Smollett in the Twayne series, published in 1968. The term updated is Spector's own, and it is accurately descriptive. The book has not really been revised at all; here and there new sentences and paragraphs have been introduced, usually for the purpose of acknowledging recent Smollett scholarship and criticism; accordingly the notes have increased in number and the Selective Bibliography has lengthened. Spector has not budged an inch from his original position in the 1968 book, where he argued with a kind of relentless logic from the premise (mistaken, many have since concluded) that Smollett was a picaresque writer whose novels could only be fully understood within the context of the picaresque tradition. The argument was problematical then, especially but not exclusively with respect to Humphry Clinker, it remains problematical now, notwithstanding Spector's quarrelsome nods here and there in the direction of such Smollettians as PaulGabriel Boucé and G.S. Rousseau, who have taken issue with him on the matter of Smollett's picaresque and have tried (successfully, on the whole) to broaden discussion of the subject. Spector is not exactly wrong in his views, but he is unwilling to see beyond their limitations. And so he continues in 1989 to insist, as he did in 1968, that (for example) the hero of Smollett's avowed imitation of Cervantes, Sir Launcelot Greaves, is a picaro—when in fact he is an unmistakably quixotic figure (Robert Alter long ago, in 1964, established the clear difference between the two character types); and he still believes that Humphry Clinker is "essentially picaresque," its several correspondents forming a "group of picaros" replacing "the individual rogue-hero" (pp. 129-30, 1968; pp. 106-7, 1989). Sir Launcelot Greaves and Humphry Clinker, like all of Smollett's fiction, contain strong elements of the picaresque , but it is a troublesome question whether any one of the novels should be defined rigidly in terms of that "genre," as Spector repeatedly calls it. It is, indeed , doubtful whether the picaresque is a "genre" at all. In several important reconsiderations published since 1968, most notably those of Claudio Guillen (Literature as System, 1971), Richard Bjomson (The Picaresque Hero in European Fiction, 1977), and Alexander Blackburn (The Myth of the Picaro, 1979), the conception of the picaresque as genre has been convincingly challenged and replaced by the conceptions of mode and myth. Spector takes no notice of such reconsiderations, which, if he had consulted them while preparing the new version of his book, might have persuaded him to revise towards a less restrictive and more balanced approach. In fairness it ought to be said that Spector's approach does have the virtue of conviction. The argument for it is lucid, vigorous, even provocative at times. In its current incarnation his book possesses the additional interest of those references to recent Smollett criticism mentioned earlier. For the most part these REVIEWS 169 references are, however, no more than scattered interpolations. The chapter on Ferdinand Count Fathom includes two fresh paragraphs describing commentary since 1968 (pp. 67-68); the chapter on Sir Launcelot Greaves adds three paragraphs written to similar purpose (pp. 85-87); and so on. Spector does not engage much with what he describes, despite occasional disagreements; and when his descriptions end, back he goes to 1968 and dependency (it now seems excessive) on the works of Lewis Knapp, Louis Martz, and George Kahrl— all published in the 1940s. The only substantial original material appears in the opening chapter ("From Grub Street to Parnassus"), where there is expanded discussion of Smollett's journalistic, historical, and travel writing. Those who found Spector's study praiseworthy in 1968 will find it praiseworthy now; those who found it unsatisfactory will do so again. Nothing much has changed—so little, in fact, as to call into question the justification for this "updated edition," which is hardly more than an exercise in redundancy. The truth is that Spector, a very able critic and the compiler of an authoritative bibliography , Tobias Smollett...

The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (review)

Hebrew Studies 31 (1990) 178 Reviews and contributes to the length. Similarly, the reader must repeatedly make major transitions from the somewhat dry, scholarly, abstract style of most of the commentary to those sections which are not only more theological and reflective, but even didactic or homiletical. Eileen Schuller McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario LBS 4KJ THE BOOK OF GOD: A RESPONSE TO THE BmLE. By Gabriel Josipovici. Pp. xv + 350. New Haven: Yale University, 1988. Cloth. Gabriel Josipovici is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction , and his articles include the essay on the Epistle to the Hebrews in The Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. This book on the Bible is a stimulating conversation on reading and criticism. I would heartily recommend it to anyone concerned with biblical texts and Western literature. For me it was a good reading and, in my view, it would be an excellent secondary text to use for certain intermediate and advanced courses in the Bible. Yet my praise must be qualified. As interesting and instructive as this series of essays is, I find it flawed by its characteristically contemporary literary bias that gives the advantage to language in the form of narrative. To be fair, Josipovici does take into account the legal portions of the Torah and the genealogies, but I would argue that he neglects the very center of religion and culture, namely, the ritual of sacrifice and its various ramifications which include, above all, the role of the victim and the scapegoat. It will not do to rejoin that this is a treatise in literary criticism, not analysis of ritual and sacrifice, for the author's view of literature, particularly biblical literature (see below), is such that a given work's own mode of establishing a world, its own "truth," must be taken into account. Josipovici suggests this perspective graphically with the jacket cover image that is repeated on the page facing p. 3: an illustration from a late Ethiopic biblical manuscript that shows Moses receiving the tablets of the Law. Yet in spite of this pictorial epitaph, he is like most critics and biblical narratologists in his silence about the relation of Torah to sacrifice. In my opening statement I used the word "conversation" advisedly. Josipovici carries on a conversation with the reader, addressing the reader Hebrew Studies 31 (1990) 179 Reviews in the very mode of exploration, discovery, and understanding that he emphasizes in biblical narrative. In the best British fashion he is anecdotal without being disorganized, personal without being sentimental. I infer from the many conversation partners he acknowledges in the preface, as well as from the mention of certain periodicals where his essays have appeared, that he is Jewish. However, his discussion of the NT is quite fair, whether or not one agrees with his conclusions, and in fact he presents some of the most helpful insights on the themes of "gospe}"' and "incarnation " that I have encountered. Nonetheless, I think it is accurate to say that most of the positive influences on his thinking are Jewish, and the point of view he consistently asks us to consider is informed by an interplay of the Jewish Scriptures and the history of the modem novel. For Josipovici, the Bible both is and is not literature. It is not mere literature, but literature that speaks to us "authoritatively-about the nature of authority" (p. 26). But then any great literary work is not just literature. " ...No one would read [the Aeneid] 'with no interest in Rome', and yet no one would deny that it was a poem and not a sacred text" (p. 24). The difference between the Bible and other literary works is that the Bible is regarded as authoritative, that is, canonical-not only in the theological sense, but because it informs our cultural and religious presuppositions about how to read any book. Josipovici recognizes that the Hebrew Bible (HB) and the NT have entered into Western culture as two parts of one book. For the Christian tradition the HB is the OTt a kind of arch hanging in mid-air until completed by the NT. By contrast, the...