Research Catalog

Writing their nations : the tradition of nineteenth-century American Jewish women writers

Title: Writing their nations : the tradition of nineteenth-century American Jewish women writers / Diane Lichtenstein.
Author: Lichtenstein, Diane Marilyn.
Publication: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, ©1992.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	PS153.J4 L5 1992	Off-site

Details

Description

x, 176 pages; 25 cm

Summary

The unique literary tradition of nineteenth-century American Jewish women has been largely ignored. In Writing Their Nations, Diane Lichtenstein considers more than twenty-five of these authors, including Emma Lazarus, Rebekah Hyneman, Penina Moise, and Emma Wolf. Their texts illustrate how Jews, women, and other "outsiders" have simultaneously struggled to maintain their "other" identity and to be seen as authentically American. These women strove to sustain alliances with both their American and their Jewish nations, and they used their writing to affirm multiple loyalties - despite the historical, religious, and cultural obstacles that discouraged or prohibited them from writing. By molding two stereotypes, the American "True Woman" and the Jewish "Mother in Israel," these authors attempted to follow the prescriptions for middle-class American and Jewish womanly behavior in their lives and in their writing. They thus reassured their Jewish families and their American readers that they were "good citizens." Wrestling with issues of assimilation as well as gender, these women wrote from a unique vantage point.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-167) and index.

Contents

I. Introducing the Tradition -- II. Mythic Ideals of American and Jewish Womanhood -- III. The Words and Worlds of Emma Lazarus -- IV. American and Jewish Womanhood -- V. American and Jewish Nationalities -- VI. American Jewish Women Themselves.

ISBN

0253333466
9780253333469

LCCN

91047015

OCLC

ocm25049630
25049630
SCSB-1967312

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library