Böcker av Joseph Sherman

This book seeks to challenge conventionally accepted views of David Bergelson's achievement by examining his entire oeuvre. It offers a full-length biography, the first comprehensive bibliography of Bergelson's work, and translations of two of his most influential programmatic essays.

Peretz Markish (1895-1952), one of Eastern Europe's most important Yiddish poets in the period between the two world wars, was a fiercely independent maverick who published work in all literary genres.

Among the finest prose stylists in Yiddish literature, David Bergelson (1884-1952) was caught up in many of the twentieth centurys most defining events. In 1909 he emerged as a pioneer of modernist prose, observing the slow decay of the Tsarist empire.

In this examination of the myth of the Jewish Pope in four Yiddish literary texts dating from between 1602 and 1943, Sherman explores to what extent Yiddish language and literature derive from the dominant values of mainstream European culture.

Early in the twentieth century, Yiddish, previously stigmatized as a corrupt jargon, came to be recognized as a language in its own right which was already the vehicle for a rich literature.