National Poetry, Empires and War

National Poetry, Empires and War
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317618106

Nationalism has given the world a genre of poetry bright with ideals of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of man, but also, at times, burning with humiliation and grievance, hatred and lust for revenge, driving human kind, as the Austrian poet Grillparzer put it, ‘From humanity via nationality to bestiality’. National Poetry, Empires and War considers national poetry, and its glorification of war, from ancient to modern times, in a series of historical, social and political perspectives. Starting with the Hebrew Bible and Homer and moving through the Crusades and examples of subsequent empires, this book has much on pre-modern national poetry but focuses chiefly on post-1789 poetry which emerged from the weakening and collapse of empires, as the idealistic liberalism of nationalism in the age of Byron, Whitman, D’Annunzio, Yeats, Bialik, and Kipling was replaced by darker purposes culminating in World War I and the rise of fascism. Many national poets are the subject of countless critical and biographical studies, but this book aims to give a panoramic view of national poetry as a whole. It will be of great interest to any scholars of nationalism, Jewish Studies, history, comparative literature, and general cultural studies.

National Poetry, Empires and War

National Poetry, Empires and War
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2019-12-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367870195

Nationalism has given the world a genre of poetry bright with ideals of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of man, but also, at times, burning with humiliation and grievance, hatred and lust for revenge, driving human kind, as the Austrian poet Grillparzer put it, 'From humanity via nationality to bestiality'. National Poetry, Empires and War considers national poetry, and its glorification of war, from ancient to modern times, in a series of historical, social and political perspectives. Starting with the Hebrew Bible and Homer and moving through the Crusades and examples of subsequent empires, this book has much on pre-modern national poetry but focuses chiefly on post-1789 poetry which emerged from the weakening and collapse of empires, as the idealistic liberalism of nationalism in the age of Byron, Whitman, D'Annunzio, Yeats, Bialik, and Kipling was replaced by darker purposes culminating in World War I and the rise of fascism. Many national poets are the subject of countless critical and biographical studies, but this book aims to give a panoramic view of national poetry as a whole. It will be of great interest to any scholars of nationalism, Jewish Studies, history, comparative literature, and general cultural studies.

Nationalism, War and Jewish Education

Nationalism, War and Jewish Education
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-10-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429779933

Nationalism, War and Jewish Education explores historical circumstances leading to the emergence of a Jewish religious school system lasting to modern times and the process by which this system was broken down and adapted in secular form as Jewish nationalism grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Roman period, education became an essential part of rabbinic pacifist accommodation following Jewish defeats, while in the modern period, secular education was associated with nationalism and increasing militancy of emerging states. In both periods there was a revival of Hebrew and the creation of an educational system based on Hebrew texts. Both revivals were responses to anti-Semitism, which pushed large numbers of Jews away from assimilation into the dominant culture to a renewed Jewish national identity. The book highlights the centrifugal and centripetal shifts in Jewish identity, from messianic militarism to pacifism and back. It shows how changes in Jewish education accompanied these shifts. While drawing on historical scholarship for background, this book is essentially a literary study, showing how literary changes at different times and places reflect historical, socio-psychological, economic and political change. Nationalism, War and Jewish Education is original in showing how ancient Jewish education affected modern Jewish society, therefore it is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in Jewish history and literature, education, development studies and nationalism.

Bialik, the Hebrew Bible and the Literature of Nationalism

Bialik, the Hebrew Bible and the Literature of Nationalism
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2023-05-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000857395

This book explores the life and poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) in the context of European national literature between the French Revolution and World War I, showing how he helped create a modern Hebrew national culture, spurring the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. The author begins with Bialik’s background in the Tsarist Empire, contextualizing Jewish powerlessness in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. As European anti-Semitism grew, Bialik emerged at the vanguard of a modern Hebrew national movement, building on ancient biblical and rabbinic tradition and speaking to Jewish concerns in neo-prophetic poems, love poems, poems for children, and folk poems. This book makes accessible a broad but representative selection of Bialik’s poetry in translation. Alongside this, a variety of national poets are considered from across Europe, including Solomos in Greece, Mickiewicz in Poland, Shevchenko in Ukraine, Njegoš in Serbia, Petőfi in Hungary, and Yeats in Ireland. Aberbach argues that Bialik as Jewish national poet cannot be understood except in the dual context of ancient Jewish nationalism and modern European nationalism, both political and cultural. Written in clear and accessible prose, this book will interest those studying modern European nationalism, Hebrew literature, Jewish history, and anti-Semitism.

First World War Poetry

First World War Poetry
Author: Jon Silkin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1997-02-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780141180090

A selection of poetry written during World War I. In the introduction Jon Silkin traces the changing mood of the poets - from patriotism through anger and compassion to an active desire for social change. The book includes work by Sassoon, Owen, Blunden, Rosenberg, Hardy and Lawrence.

The Hebrew Bible, Nationalism and the Origins of Anti-Judaism

The Hebrew Bible, Nationalism and the Origins of Anti-Judaism
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000708276

In the attempts to unify divided peoples on the basis of a shared past, both historical and mythical, this book illumines aspects of cultural nationalism common since the Middle Ages. As an edited work, the Bible includes texts mostly depicting long-gone historical eras extending over several centuries. Following on from Aberbach’s previous work National Poetry, Empires, and War, this book argues that works of this nature – notably the Mujo-Halil songs in Albania, the Irish stories of Cuchulain, the songs of the Nibelungen in Germany, or the Finnish legends collected in The Kalevala – have an ancient precedent in the Hebrew Bible (to which national literatures often allude and refer), a subject largely neglected in biblical studies. The self-critical element in the Hebrew Bible, common in later national literature, is examined as the basis of later anti-Semitism, as the Bible was not confined to Jews but was adopted in translation by many other national groups. With several dozen original translations from the Hebrew, this book highlights how the Bible influenced and was distorted by later national cultures. Written without jargon, this book is intended for the general reader, but is also an important contribution to the study of the Bible, nationalism, and Jewish history.

The Insanity of Empire

The Insanity of Empire
Author: Robert Bly
Publisher:
Total Pages: 76
Release: 2004
Genre: Poetry
ISBN:

This poetry collection discusses the Iraq war and some of the ominous implications of that serious step taken by the Republican administration. The collection includes six poems from the author's book on the Vietnam War, as well as a new group of poems discussing the power of the greedy soul or 'the rapacious soul.' Another five poems are in the ghazal form, including 'Call and answer, ' one of the first poems written against the Iraq War.

Routledge Handbook on Zionism

Routledge Handbook on Zionism
Author: Colin Shindler
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 739
Release: 2024-06-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1040025641

This Handbook, the first of its kind, provides an in- depth examination of the evolution, ideology, history and culture of Zionism and its various movements. Distancing itself from the slogans and cliches of advocacy, the volume provides much-needed context and background on the emergence of Zionism. The Handbook is divided into eight parts – with contributions from some forty of the world’s leading scholars on Zionism –to elucidate its various strands. These include underrepresented areas such as Zionism in the Arab World before the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism and Marxism, the emergence of the Zionist Right, the language war between Hebrew and Yiddish, the struggle for Jewish women’s suffrage, the poetry of Lea Goldberg, and Zionism in emerging new Jewish communities in locations like Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and Zimbabwe. Another section on Zionism in repressive states stretches from an examination of Zionism in Hitler’s Germany to the Ayatollahs’ Iran today; from subterranean Zionism in Stalin’s Russia to apartheid South Africa. The volume concludes by examining current issues, including the relationship between evangelicals and Zionism in the US, and the representation of Zionism in the age of the internet. Providing a sweeping overview of Zionism in its many forms, the volume will appeal to students, researchers and general readers interested in Jewish studies in the Middle East and beyond, as well as those seeking to understand the roots of contemporary Israel.

The Environment and Literature of Moral Dilemmas

The Environment and Literature of Moral Dilemmas
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2021-08-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000400050

Exploring the literature of environmental moral dilemmas from the Hebrew Bible to modern times, this book argues the necessity of cross-disciplinary approaches to environmental studies, as a subject affecting everyone, in every aspect of life. Moral dilemmas are central in the literary genre of protest against the effects of industry, particularly in Romantic literature and ‘Condition of England’ novels. Writers from the time of the Industrial Revolution to the present—including William Blake, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, T.S. Eliot, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, and J.M. Coetzee—follow the Bible in seeing environmental problems in moral terms, as a consequence of human agency. The issues raised by these and other writers—including damage to the environment and its effects on health and quality of life, particularly on the poor; economic conflicts of interest; water and air pollution, deforestation, and the environmental effects of war—are fundamentally the same today, making their works a continual source of interest and insight. Sketching a brief literary history on the impact of human behavior on the environment, this volume will be of interest to readers researching environmental studies, literary studies, religious studies and international development, as well as a useful resource to scientists and readers of the Arts.

Songs in Dark Times

Songs in Dark Times
Author: Amelia M. Glaser
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674250435

A probing reading of leftist Jewish poets who, during the interwar period, drew on the trauma of pogroms to depict the suffering of other marginalized peoples. Between the world wars, a generation of Jewish leftist poets reached out to other embattled peoples of the earth—Palestinian Arabs, African Americans, Spanish Republicans—in Yiddish verse. Songs in Dark Times examines the richly layered meanings of this project, grounded in Jewish collective trauma but embracing a global community of the oppressed. The long 1930s, Amelia M. Glaser proposes, gave rise to a genre of internationalist modernism in which tropes of national collective memory were rewritten as the shared experiences of many national groups. The utopian Jews of Songs in Dark Times effectively globalized the pogroms in a bold and sometimes fraught literary move that asserted continuity with anti-Arab violence and black lynching. As communists and fellow travelers, the writers also sought to integrate particular experiences of suffering into a borderless narrative of class struggle. Glaser resurrects their poems from the pages of forgotten Yiddish communist periodicals, particularly the New York–based Morgn Frayhayt (Morning Freedom) and the Soviet literary journal Royte Velt (Red World). Alongside compelling analysis, Glaser includes her own translations of ten poems previously unavailable in English, including Malka Lee’s “God’s Black Lamb,” Moyshe Nadir’s “Closer,” and Esther Shumiatsher’s “At the Border of China.” These poets dreamed of a moment when “we” could mean “we workers” rather than “we Jews.” Songs in Dark Times takes on the beauty and difficulty of that dream, in the minds of Yiddish writers who sought to heal the world by translating pain.