109-019 Literature of Destruction

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Admission to the Postgraduate Diploma or Fourth Year combined Honours in Jewish Studies.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject involves the advanced study of Jewish literary texts, classical, medieval and modern, with special concern for the theme of destruction and literary representations of and responses to catastrophe. Attention is also given to major topics in the critical tradition of reading Jewish texts. Contemporary Holocaust literature forms a substantial component of the subject, including the work of writers such as Primo Levy, Elie Wiesel, David Grossman. Students should complete the subject with a deeper and more extensive understanding of the character of Jewish literature through the ages; and have developed critical skills in its analysis and interpretation.

Assessment

Written work totalling 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

Materials prepared by Department.

• A Appelfeld (ed), Bertha in Penueli and Uchmani. Megiddo, 1965.
• A Oz, Touch the Water Touch the Wind. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
• A Oz, Crusade and Unto Death. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
• D Roskies, Against the Apocalypse. Cambridge, 1984.
• A Appelfeld, Badenheim. 1939.
• G Ramras-Rauch & J Michman-Melkman (eds), Facing the Holocaust. The Jewish Publication Society Philadelphia, 1985.
• A Mintz, Hurban. Columbia University Press, 1984.