Trends in israeli literature

Pre-State of Israel Literature Background • Hasidism Roughly 18 th Century • Largely Inspired by Eastern European Jews • Focused on Spirituality & Prayer with Aim of Moral Teaching •

Trends in Israeli Literature

June Rodil Rachel Eccleston

Pre-State of Israel Literature

Background

• Hasidism ( Roughly 18 th Century )

• Largely Inspired by Eastern European Jews

• Focused on Spirituality & Prayer with Aim of Moral Teaching

• Haskalah ( Roughly 19 th Century )

• “Hebrew Enlightenment”

• Move towards the importance of Reason

• Jewish Literary/Cultural Entrance into European Society/Civilization

• Neo-Biblical Style– Limited Vocabulary (~5,000 words)

• Into the 20 th Century- WWI

• Beginnings of Unity of Language

Pre-State of Israel Literature

o Major contemporary spiritual concerns

o loss of tradition, faith, and identity

o inner uncertainties

o tragedy and the grotesque

o Conflict between traditional Jewish

life/language and the modern world

o Immigrant writers

o Novels, short stories, poetry

Pre-State of Israel Authors

• Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970)

• The Bridal Canopy (1931)

• Yesteryear ( 1945)

• Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934)

• Poems (1901)

• Poems (1908)

• Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921)

• In Winter (1904)

• Breakdown and Bereavement (1920)

1940s & 1950s: War of Independence Generation

society and State

activity

the Land of Israel

1940s & 1950s Authors

• S Yizhar (1916-)

• Days of Ziklag (1958)

• Midnight Convoy (1950)

• Haim Gouri (1923-) “Israel’s Poet”

• Flowers of Fire, Years of Fire (1949)

• Poems of the Seal (1954)

• Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

• Now and in Other Days (1955)

1960s & 1970s: The Generation of

the State

ideal

of Israel

Hebrew/Aramaic

1960s & 1970s Authors

• Amos Oz (1939-)

• My Michael (1968)

• The Hill of Evil Counsel (1976)

• Avraham B Yehoshua (1936-)

• The Death of the Old Man (1962)

• An Evening in May (1975)

• Yehoshua Kenaz (1937-)

• After the Holidays (1964)

• The Great Woman of the Dreams (1973)

1980s & 1990s

Literature Genres Develop

1980s & 1990s Authors

• Aharon Appelfeld (1932-)

• At One and the Same (1985)

• David Grossman (1954-)

• The Smile of the Lamb (1983)

• The Book of Intimate Grammar (1991)

• Savyon Liebrecht (1948)

• Apples From the Desert (1986)

• It’s All Greek to Me, He Said to Her (1992)

Late 1990s & The New Millennium: The Post-Zionists

• Younger Writers with universalistic themes

• Alienation, Surrealism, Idiosyncrasies

• Shift to Less Spiritual Concerns– The Good Life and the Pursuit of Happiness

• Anarchic, Nihilistic, Iconoclastic

• A More “European” Approach in Literary

Style

The Post-Zionist Authors

Other Stories (2001)