ARCHETYPES AND AVATARS: A CASE STUDY OF THE CULTURAL VARIABLES OF MODERN JUDAIC DISCOURSE THROUGH THE SELECTED LITERARY WORKS OF A. B. YEHOSHUA, CHAIM POTOK, AND CHOCHANA BOUKHOBZA
Open Access
- Author:
- Devir, Nathan Paul
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 24, 2010
- Committee Members:
- Thomas Oliver Beebee, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Daniel Walden, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Kathryn Hume, Committee Member
Baruch Halpern, Committee Member
Gila Safran Naveh, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Jewish
Hebrew
Francophone
Maghrebian - Abstract:
- A defining characteristic of secular Jewish literatures since the Haskalah, or the movement toward “Jewish Enlightenment” that began around the end of the eighteenth century, is the reliance upon the archetypal aspects of the Judaic tradition, together with a propensity for intertextual pastiche and dialogue with the sacred texts. Indeed, from the revival of the Hebrew language at the end of the nineteenth century and all throughout the defining events of the last one hundred years, the trend of the textually sacrosanct appearing as a persistent motif in Judaic cultural production has only increased. What the discipline of literary studies has neglected to analyze, however, are the comparative aspects of such a rapport, with respect to the interpretive differences in the composition of modern Jewish fiction across geo-political, linguistic, and gender-based paradigms. To that end, this project presents a case study of the cultural variables of modern Judaic discourse through an archetypal analysis of selections from secular Modern Hebrew, Anglo-American, and Francophone Maghrebian Jewish fiction, focusing on the literary works of three major Jewish writers, all of whom were born in the last century. These writers are: the Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua (1936–); the American author Chaim Potok (1929–2002); and the Tunisian-born, French-Israeli author Chochana Boukhobza (1959–). These particular authors are relevant for a study of Judaic cultural variables because the literary works of all three have been characterized by their tendency to use religion, myth, and metanarratives to probe crises of identity and interaction in the modern Jewish paradigm. Included in this study are the analyses of Yehoshua’s short stories “Hamefaked haakharon” (“The Last Commander”) (1962) and “Betkhilat kaiyts 1970” (“Early in the Summer of 1970”) (1972), as well as the analysis of his novel Gerushim meukharim (“A Late Divorce”) (1982). The literary works of Potok’s analyzed are the short story “The Trope Teacher” (2001) and the novels My Name Is Asher Lev (1972) and The Gift of Asher Lev (1990). The novel of Boukhobza’s explored in this study is Un été à Jérusalem (“A Summer in Jerusalem”) (1986). The central methodology used in this study has been taken from the discipline of “archetypal” post-Jungian psychology, which defines archetypes as recurrent themes, motifs, or figures, historically transmitted as patterns or models, which seem to follow a specific ethnic blueprint. This approach implies that many different interpretations of a people’s sub-cultural disposition may be found in a single archetype, depending on the specific sub-group involved. For example, the archetypes present in the common intertextual Judaic narratives or motifs that function as the building blocks for Yehoshua’s, Potok’s, and Boukhobza’s fiction include the Binding of Isaac; the revelation to Moses at Mt. Sinai; and the enigma of the “Shekhinah,” the feminine presence of the Divine. And yet, each author engages in a specific, exegetical midrash of these long-held stories based on his or her particular sub-cultural worldview. A careful examination of each writer’s response to the Judaic textual tradition demonstrates the ways in which the modern interpretation of foundational Judaic narratives is codetermined by several key environmental factors. These factors include: geo-political affiliation; degree of religious observance; attitudes regarding gender roles; and notions of ethnicity. Such factors create the conceptual frameworks through which Jewish writers from differing backgrounds reference, recast, re-envision, or subvert traditional and/or religious figures, themes, tropes, discourses, or narratives from the intertextual reservoir of Judaic culture. The foundational texts in this reservoir are made up of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and other celebrated, canonical works that are familiar to Jews the world over as symbolic points of reference. Jewish writers who choose to incorporate into their literary texts well-known elements from the continuum of Judaic textual history ultimately generate the meaning of this incorporation by way of the sub-cultural variables that define the nature of their respective, environmentally-based conceptual frameworks. In the same way that the differences in those frameworks illustrate the sub-cultural schisms that exist between modern Jewish sub-groups, such frameworks are also responsible for the varieties of aesthetic formulae chosen to depict those schisms in the literary text. The core contribution of this project for the field of literary studies is that it is the first to examine the comparative aspects of the cultural variables in the concept of “Jewishness” as this concept appears in the context of Jewish literatures. It also breaks new ground in that it offers explanations as to why the idea of “Jewish literature” as literature produced by groups of dissimilar Jews must undergo the same scholarly reckoning in literary studies as the idea of “Jewish communities” has in sociological and anthropological surveys. This research, therefore, represents the first step toward a broader attempt at troubling the notion of “Jewish literatures” across geo-political, linguistic, and gender-based paradigms.