Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Editors and Advisers
- Polin
- Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Introduction
- PART I PRE-PARTITION POLAND (to 1795)
- PART II THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- 7 The Jews of Warsaw, Polish Society, and the Partitioning Powers, 1795-1861
- 8 The Jewish Community in the Political Life of Łódź in the Years 1865-1914
- 9 Aspects of the History of Warsaw as a Yiddish Literary Centre
- 10 Non-Jews and Gentile Society in East European Hebrew and Yiddish Literature 1856-1914
- 11 Trends in the Literary Perception of Jews in Modern Polish Fiction
- 12 Eros and Enlightenment: Love against Marriage in the East European Jewish Enlightenment
- 13 Gender Differentiation and Education of the Jewish Woman in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe
- 14 Polish Synagogues in the Nineteenth Century
- PART III BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS
- PART IV THE SECOND WORLD WAR
- PART V AFTER 1945
- Notes on Contributors
- Chronological Table
- Maps
- Glossary
- Index
10 - Non-Jews and Gentile Society in East European Hebrew and Yiddish Literature 1856-1914
from PART II - THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Editors and Advisers
- Polin
- Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Introduction
- PART I PRE-PARTITION POLAND (to 1795)
- PART II THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- 7 The Jews of Warsaw, Polish Society, and the Partitioning Powers, 1795-1861
- 8 The Jewish Community in the Political Life of Łódź in the Years 1865-1914
- 9 Aspects of the History of Warsaw as a Yiddish Literary Centre
- 10 Non-Jews and Gentile Society in East European Hebrew and Yiddish Literature 1856-1914
- 11 Trends in the Literary Perception of Jews in Modern Polish Fiction
- 12 Eros and Enlightenment: Love against Marriage in the East European Jewish Enlightenment
- 13 Gender Differentiation and Education of the Jewish Woman in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe
- 14 Polish Synagogues in the Nineteenth Century
- PART III BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS
- PART IV THE SECOND WORLD WAR
- PART V AFTER 1945
- Notes on Contributors
- Chronological Table
- Maps
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
The evolution of Jewish literature in Eastern Europe was closely related to the social, economic and cultural changes which took place in the contacts between Jewish society and the non-Jewish population. These changes, which were part of the ‘modernisation’ process in Eastern Europe, influenced literary creation, whether in Galicia under Austrian rule or in the Congress Kingdom, Lithuania or Volhynia under Russian rule. This extra-literary reality not only found expression in the literary material, but also determined the manner of characterisation and form, for the world of the ideas of the writers and their emotional load mingled with the literary traditions and determined their use of conventions, literary patterns and modes of formation. An analysis of the changes which took place in the image of the non-Jews and their society in relation to the historical background has to be an inter-disciplinary study which touches the realms of sociology, linguistics and folklore.
The changes which took place in the way the non-Jewish environment and its socio-historical background was described in literature are a part of a cultural-linguistic polysystem which evolved over a specific period. In this sketch, I want to deal with the period which begins with the reign of Tsar Alexander II (1856) and which ends with the outbreak of the First World War. During this period there was an intensification of contact between the Jews of Eastern Europe and the non-Jewish population. Social and cultural processes which had already begun in the first half of the nineteenth century were accelerated, and literature evolved in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and Polish, in which expression was given to the image of the non-Jewish environment in relationship to these changes. This was a transitional period at the start of which a system of contacts and relationships of a medieval character was dominant between Jews and Gentiles. By its end, a number of different views of the relations between Jews and Gentiles competed for dominance in the Jewish environment. These ranged from the acceptance of the conceptual and literary influences of the outside world while rejecting assimilation, to the negation of a specific Jewish identity.
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- From Shtetl to SocialismStudies from Polin, pp. 134 - 150Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1993