The Shriek of Silence

The Shriek of Silence
Author: David Patterson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2021-12-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813194156

"In the Holocaust novel, silence is always a character, and the word is always its subject matter." So writes David Patterson in this profound and original study of more than thirty important writers. Contrary to existing views, he argues, the Holocaust novel is not an attempt to depict an unimaginable reality or an ineffable horror. It is, rather, an endeavor to fetch the word from silence and restore it to meaning, to resurrect the human soul, to regenerate the relation between the self and God, the self and other, the self and itself. This book is less a critical study in the usual sense than an impassioned meditation on the deeper sources of the Holocaust novel. Among the authors examined are Elie Wiesel, Arnost Lustig, Aharon Appelfeld, Katzetnik 135633, Primo Levi, Yehuda Amichai, Piotr Rawicz, A. Anatoli, Saul Bellow, I.B. Singer, Anna Langfus, Rachmil Bryks, and Ilse Aichinger. The Shriek of Silence is a first in several respects: the first to examine the Holocaust novels in their original languages, the first to articulate a theoretical basis for its approach, and the first phenomenological investigation—one that attempts to penetrate the process of creation for these novelists. Organized along conceptual lines, the book examines "the word in exile," the themes of death of the father and the child, transformations of the self, and the implications of the reader. Its philosophical foundations are Rosenzweig, Buber, Neher, and Levinas. Its critical approach is shaped by Bakhtin. The novelists of the Holocaust, in witnessing through their words, regain their voices and in so doing are reborn. By probing the depths of their struggle, Patterson's study draws us too toward a higher understanding, perhaps even our own rebirth.

The Shriek of Silence

The Shriek of Silence
Author: David Patterson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2014-07-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813161495

"In the Holocaust novel, silence is always a character, and the word is always its subject matter." So writes David Patterson in this profound and original study of more than thirty important writers. Contrary to existing views, he argues, the Holocaust novel is not an attempt to depict an unimaginable reality or an ineffable horror. It is, rather, an endeavor to fetch the word from silence and restore it to meaning, to resurrect the human soul, to regenerate the relation between the self and God, the self and other, the self and itself. This book is less a critical study in the usual sense than an impassioned meditation on the deeper sources of the Holocaust novel. Among the authors examined are Elie Wiesel, Arnost Lustig, Aharon Appelfeld, Katzetnik 135633, Primo Levi, Yehuda Amichai, Piotr Rawicz, A. Anatoli, Saul Bellow, I.B. Singer, Anna Langfus, Rachmil Bryks, and Ilse Aichinger. The Shriek of Silence is a first in several respects: the first to examine the Holocaust novels in their original languages, the first to articulate a theoretical basis for its approach, and the first phenomenological investigation—one that attempts to penetrate the process of creation for these novelists. Organized along conceptual lines, the book examines "the word in exile," the themes of death of the father and the child, transformations of the self, and the implications of the reader. Its philosophical foundations are Rosenzweig, Buber, Neher, and Levinas. Its critical approach is shaped by Bakhtin. The novelists of the Holocaust, in witnessing through their words, regain their voices and in so doing are reborn. By probing the depths of their struggle, Patterson's study draws us too toward a higher understanding, perhaps even our own rebirth.

The Holocaust and the Nonrepresentable

The Holocaust and the Nonrepresentable
Author: David Patterson
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2018-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438470053

Argues that Holocaust representation has ethical implications fundamentally linked to questions of good and evil. Many books focus on issues of Holocaust representation, but few address why the Holocaust in particular poses such a representational problem. David Patterson draws from Emmanuel Levinas’s contention that the Good cannot be represented. He argues that the assault on the Good is equally nonrepresentable and this nonrepresentable aspect of the Holocaust is its distinguishing feature. Utilizing Jewish religious thought, Patterson examines how the literary word expresses the ineffable and how the photographic image manifests the invisible. Where the Holocaust is concerned, representation is a matter not of imagination but of ethical implication, not of what it was like but of what must be done. Ultimately Patterson provides a deeper understanding of why the Holocaust itself is indefinable—not only as an evil but also as a fundamental assault on the very categories of good and evil affirmed over centuries of Jewish teaching and testimony. “This book commands respect, both for the author’s immense and intimate knowledge of what has become a vast body of work and for his unconditional commitment to the subject. I am in awe of what I have just read.” — Dorota Glowacka, coeditor of Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries

Silence in Philosophy, Literature, and Art

Silence in Philosophy, Literature, and Art
Author: Steven Bindeman
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2017-08-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004352589

Silence exists at the edge of the world, where words break off and meaning fades into ambiguity. The numerous treatments of silence in Steven L. Bindeman’s Silence in Philosophy, Literature, and Art question the misleading clarity of certainty, which persists in the unreflective discourse of common experience. Significant philosophical problems, such as the limits of language, the perception of sound and the construction of meaning, the dynamics of the social realm, and the nature of the human self, all appear differently as a consequence of this questioning. Silence is shown to have two modes, disruptive and healing, which work together as complementary stages within a creative process. The interaction between these two modes of silence serves as the dynamic behind the entire work.

Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs

Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs
Author: Deborah Lee Prescott
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786457872

In the life stories of Holocaust survivors, biblical imagery can be invoked to explicate the unexplainable, to make real the unreal. This text examines the role of Genesis in the autobiographies of survivors. Three main concerns converge: the literary nature of Biblical allusion, the contextual history of the Holocaust, and Midrashic considerations that arise from biblical reference. Chapters examine references to Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Akeda, Jacob's struggle with the angel, and Cain's murder of Abel.

ALONG THE EDGE OF ANNIHILATION (cl)

ALONG THE EDGE OF ANNIHILATION (cl)
Author:
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 332
Release:
Genre: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
ISBN: 9780295803371

"Based on more than fifty diaries of Jewish Holocaust victims of all ages, written while the events described were actually taking place". -- Jacket.

Representing the Holocaust in Children's Literature

Representing the Holocaust in Children's Literature
Author: Lydia Kokkola
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135354049

Writing about the Holocaust and writing for young readers evoke two quite separate sets of concerns which are not always mutually compatible. The first half of Representing the Holocaust focuses on how literary material can present historically verifiable material. The second half examines how such materials will be perceived by young readers; whether they will be able to determine any boundaries between fictionality and factuality, and what motivates young readers to keep reading. The work concludes by placing the study in the context of Holocaust education.

A Defense of Poetry

A Defense of Poetry
Author: Paul H. Fry
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1995
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780804725316

A Defense of Poetry argues that literature can be defined - pragmatist and historicist arguments notwithstanding - and that in its definition its unique value can be discovered. In qualified opposition to the most sophisticated Formalist definitions involving redundancy or economy of expression, the author identifies literature ontologically as a sign of the preconceptual, as the "ostensive moment" that discloses neither the purpose nor the structure of existence but existence itself, revealed in its nonhuman register.