| Papers [1-14] of 100 :: [Page 1 of 8] | | Go to page : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 —> | Search results on "JEWISH AMERICAN LITERATURE": |
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Jewish American Literature, 2005.
An analysis of the paradox of Jewish American literature as explained by Isaac Rosenfeld and Elie Wiesel.
1,389 words (approx. 5.6 pages), 8 sources, MLA, £ 32.95
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Abstract
This paper discusses how, even though they often express themselves in multiple languages, through diverse media and with differing intentions, Jewish American authors are somehow united in creating a common body of literature that can be identified as both Jewish and American. It looks at how, although the links between some Jewish American works may seem obscure, authors such as Isaac Rosenfeld and Elie Wiesel have elucidated their common underpinnings by exploring the obstacles, responsibilities, and strengths shared by their writers.
From the Paper
"Since many early writers of Jewish American fiction focused on the experiences of new immigrants and their children, they by definition had to deal with balancing their Jewish and American selves. In doing so, they questioned aspects of mainstream American culture ranging from adherence to religious standards to prioritization of material success, consequently delving more deeply into staples of American distinctiveness than their non-Jewish peers. Precisely as Rosenfeld suggests, early alienation was fruitful in that it forced writers to question their surroundings. As the protagonists of Jewish fiction seek to move from outsider to insider, they confront the very meaning of Americanism and are forced to choose which aspects of their earlier Jewish identities they are willing to sacrifice."
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Assimilation of Jewish Americans and Italian Americans, 2002.
Evaluates the assimilation experience of the Jewish American and Italian American population.
2,400 words (approx. 9.6 pages), 8 sources, £ 61.95
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Abstract
This paper looks at the Jewish American and Italian American experience, using Milton Gordon's text, Assimilation in American Life (1964), to evaluate the experiences of both groups.
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Jewish-American Intermarriage, 2004.
A look at the assimilation of Jews into American society.
1,133 words (approx. 4.5 pages), 2 sources, MLA, £ 27.95
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Abstract
This paper examines how the United States of America has become a symbol of freedom to the rest of the world and how people from nations everywhere come to the country in pursuit of the ?American Dream?. It discusses how, once a major target of anti-Semitism, American Jews have truly established themselves in this nation and have even earned the respect and acceptance of many. In particular, it looks at how this assimilation of Jews into American society has caused a substantial increase in intermarriage, but ironically, increasing the possibility of destroying what is left of Jewish identity and unity.
From the Paper
"As Jewish immigrants moved to the United States, they quickly adapted to an American way of life while still sustaining a strong commitment to their Jewish culture. ?Most new arrivals were committed to retaining their distinctiveness and their sense of Jewish peoplehood? (Feagin 123). However, second-generation Jews became more influenced by pressures of assimilation; they did not have as strong of a tie to Judaism as their parents had because they were born in America. The media and the public schools made it easy for them to pick up the English language and American values, and they quickly became the rope in a tug of war between their parents and a dominating American culture (Feagin 123). Many second-generation Jewish women were pressured by society to reject their mothers? image of ?poverty and strong-woman reality? and instead assume the more lady-like, devoted-housewife qualities of that time (Feagin 124)."
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Pre-Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Jewish Literature, 2004.
Looks at how the Holocaust has affected Jewish literature by comparing short stories about similar subjects.
2,053 words (approx. 8.2 pages), 2 sources, MLA, £ 44.95
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Abstract
This paper compares the content and tone of two short stories, "If Not Higher" by I.L. Peretz and "?The Kozshenitser Rebe? by Binyamin Orenshtayn, in an effort to determine if the authors were affected by the Holocaust and the great wars that took place between the time the two stories were written. The paper concludes that the authors were indeed affected by these events, as was Jewish literature in general, and, by comparing the literature, we can see a shift from a religious and faith centered approach to life to a socially motivated and political approach to life.
From the Paper
"The Yiddish short story ?If Not Higher? by I.L. Peretz was published in Warsaw in 1900, decades before the holocaust. Fifty years later, the short supposedly true story of ?The Kozshenitser Rebe? was published in Yiddish by Orenshtayn in a book of memorials to Jewish leaders. Both stories tell of the behavior of a specific (assumably Hassidic) rebe on an important Jewish holiday. However, apart from this basic similarity, these two stories are radically different. This may be partly a function of having different authors and of coming from different historical areas. However, if the differences between style and content with these two works is indicative not of the personal styles of the authors, then one is left with another option: namely that the striking differences between these two works is a result of the holocaust and the slaughter of the Jewry of Eastern European. If these two works are representative of the short story genre before and after the holocaust, then it appears that this traumatic event may have drastically changed the way that Eastern European Jews view themselves and their culture."
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North American Response to Jewish Refugees, 2008.
This paper takes a strong stance that both North American leaders and its people did little to aid the numerous Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany and Austria during WWII.
2,008 words (approx. 8.0 pages), 17 sources, MLA, £ 43.95
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Abstract
The author argues in this paper that one of the great moral blights on the face of Canada and the United States is their failure to act effectively in the face of the horror that Nazi Germany perpetrated against Jews before and during World War II. The author further states that both countries during this period were marked by vitriolic anti-Semitism and goes on to analyze the question of what the leaders of the United States and Canada stood for by refusing to consider the pleas of Jewish refugees for protection.
From the Paper
"Within the government of Canada after the Liberal's accession to power in 1935, the Immigration Branch had been shuttled into the Department of Miner and Resources, under minister Frederick Charles Blair. The Immigration Branch was nominally headed by Thomas Creara, but effectively Blair gave the commands to Creara, and Blair was a rule-bound bureaucrat who firmly believed in protecting Canada from refugees, a group that to him meant Jews. (Abella & Troper, 7-8) Blair was anti-Semitic, a man of almost unbounded contempt for Jews, although he insisted in remarkable self-serving statements that he was innocent of all such sentiments and that his refusal to accommodate refugees was actually favorable to Jews, since they would only be despised by the Canadian populace (Abella & Troper, 8-9)."
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?Literature; Ancient Greek Literature?, 2002.
A discussion of the relationship between ancient Greek burial and death rites and ancient Greek literature.
1,409 words (approx. 5.6 pages), 6 sources, MLA, £ 32.95
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Abstract
This paper focuses upon illustrating the relevance of the obvious emphasis and taboo regarding Greek burial or death rites as it is portrayed in a significant amount of ancient Greek literature. It examines how literature has long been a relevant source that historians as well as other scholars can turn to so as to glean at least a marginal understanding regarding the societal norms of the era or culture in particular.
Outline
Introduction
Generalities Regarding Ancient Greek Burial Rites
Relevance of Literary Illustrations Regarding Ancient Greek Perspectives on Death
Burial Rites Within Ancient Greek literature
Conclusion
From the Paper
"One of the first things that essentially needs to be taken into consideration is that, as a result of their significantly un-advanced and superstitiously primitive preconceptions and beliefs, that nearly all kinds of ancient literature is tinged, to some degree or another, with elements of the super natural or paranormal. The occult, witches, curses and ghosts, all are things that are mentioned, with varying degree of figurativeness and realism, within ancient British as well as Greek literature. Moreover, there appears to be a particular degree of emphasis upon the relevance and effectuality of such things as oaths and curses, especially in regard to the likes of such being implemented in concern to a particular person?s death or burial. This something that is quite strongly portrayed when Euripides? Hippolytus, the protagonist within the play, reasserts his confidence to his father in so much as taking an oath that in death may neither sea nor earth receive my flesh, if I have proved false (Lawson, 1964)."
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Ancient Roman Literature, 2008.
A discussion of the worth of Roman literature and a comparison of the meter and themes of Roman literature to Greek literature.
851 words (approx. 3.4 pages), 3 sources, MLA, £ 20.95
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Abstract
This paper discusses the value of the works of the great Roman poets and prose authors. The paper specifically discusses how Roman literature and poetry is criticized because it lacks originality, being greatly indebted to the Greek texts. It describes the meter and themes of Roman literature and discusses how these, and even the mere details, are most of the times only imitations of the Greek writings.
From the Paper
"Thus, Roman art can be characterized by the lack of spontaneity and speculative power. The Romans were a logical and practical people, usually engaged in political affairs or warfare. The greatest conquerors of the antiquity, the Romans were also the greatest civilizing power. Their systematic and disciplined spirit laid the foundations of the Western civilization. As it is obvious from the lyric, dramatic and epical works of the Roman writers, they Roman people was certainly not inclined to philosophy as the Greeks had been. Indeed, the only writer who can be said to have contributed meaningfully to the realm of antique philosophy is the multidimensional Cicero, who is the only Roman methodological philosopher: "Philosophy was not a natural growth at Rome: indeed, it was regarded by the average Roman with definite mistrust, and we hear that philosophers were banished from the city in 161 B. C....The Roman, essentially a man of action engaged in the practical business of war or politics, was not given to pausing on his way to reflect deeply on the nature of the world or the ultimate meaning of human life."(Bailey, 183) The Romans were thus less preoccupied with the ultimate meaning of the universe and of life, as the Greeks were, but rather with the world of action and human behavior. Usually associated with imitation rather than creation, Roman art had nevertheless its own force precisely through its absolute conformity to classicism."
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Classical Marxist Theory and Literature, 2005.
This paper discusses the classical Marxist approach to literature, which views literature as essentially a social and cultural production.
8,870 words (approx. 35.5 pages), 85 sources, MLA, £ 128.95
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Abstract
This paper explains that in its classical sense, Marxist theory does not deal explicitly with literature and art and does not develop an aesthetic of culture or literature. However, the theoretical trajectory of Marxist thought has impacted radically on art and literature as aspects of societal and cultural discourse. The author points out that the concept of dialectic refers specifically to the methodology or method of analysis, which is peculiar to Marxist theory;. In this sense, literature and art, as cultural products, are analyzed in relation to their social and historical context. The paper analyzes specifically " Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, "A Passage to India" by E. M. Forster's and the writings of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Overview
Foundation of Marxist Theory and Literary Criticism
Marxism - Extrinsic and Intrinsic Approaches to Literature
The Premises of Marxist Criticism
Base and Superstructure
The Dialectic
Ideology and Alienation
Semiology and Psychoanalytic Theory.
Reader - Response Theories
A Marxist Critique of Literature
Analysis of the Echo in "A Passage to India": A dialectical reading
" Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad
Dickens
Shakespeare
Conclusion
From the Paper
"From this perspective, literary works are essential structures of ideological formations. In other words, literature expresses and represents the ideals and aims of class formation that persist and maintain the society. "Literature is for Marxism a particular kind of signifying practice which tends to make up what can be termed an ideological formation". Therefore, Marxist critical perspectives will attempt to explain literature from within its social context and in relation to that particular historical time period. This in turn relates to basic strategies, such as the identification of class structures and class struggle within the literature of a certain historical period."
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Theory of Literature, 2002.
Discusses the role of literature to the reader and the reader to literature.
2,300 words (approx. 9.2 pages), 8 sources, APA, £ 48.95
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Abstract
What kind of work does literature do in the world? What does a text do that a song does not? What difference does it make that we can read? And, indeed, why should we read at all? Does the written text have any redeeming value in our own age, or are we in a post-textual (as well as a postmodern and post-structuralist) age? What can the purpose of literature be when anything that is actually produced through the technology of the printing press (which once changed the world) now seems rather horribly quaint? What kind of work does literature do in the world, and what kind of work is it that we do as readers? These last two questions lie at the heart of this paper. They are not in fact the same question merely differently phrased. The paper argues that literature ? the text qua text ? and reading (the subject as agent consuming the text) can be quite different from each other. Before the writer sets forth his own ideas on the function and purpose of literature, he explores the ideas of others on the subject who have tried to define for their own times and places (and for their own writers and readers) what it is that literature does in the world.
From the Paper
"But, while the impassioned literary warriors on either side might not want to admit to this fact, it might well be that there is no single correct way to analyze a text. Or rather there may well be no single correct way to analyze every text. There may be one best way for each text, requiring us to consider local definitions of analysis rather than universal ones. However, this moderate position is one rarely admitted to by either those who support or those who oppose reader-response models and it is in fact easy to understand why this should be the case: The two embody fundamentally opposing world views. Is the purpose of literature one that is determined by the creator or by the consumer?"
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Teaching Children Literature, 2002.
Conceptual analysis of the literature on storytelling and child development in relation to reader response and and structural models of instruction in literature appreciation. Includes the development of an integrated model.
4,467 words (approx. 17.9 pages), 13 sources, APA, £ 80.95
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Abstract
This paper develops a perspective on the structural and reader response approaches to literature appreciation that is based upon empirical findings observed in research into the influence of storytelling on child development. To this end, this report first reviews the literature on how storytelling can influence the social, cognitive, and psycho-emotional development of children as well as its basic influence on learning. This examination of the effects of storytelling on child development is followed by an explication of both the structural and the reader response approaches to teaching literature appreciation. Based on the review of all of this material, the report discusses each theory in terms of the support or lack of support offered for it by the storytelling-child development literature. Where relevant, this discussion is used to modify, hone and refine theory into a new model of instruction (The Integrated Model) in literature appreciation, a model that focuses on storytelling as a mode of instruction and that incorporates elements and postulates of both the reader response model and the structural model.
From the Paper
"Effects of Storytelling on Social Development. There is a good bit of literature that supports the notion that storytelling can strongly contribute to both very young and older children's social and psychosocial development. For example, Pellowski (1990) reports that research has shown that stories inform children about the lives, the dreams, the hopes, the problems, the tensions and the conflicts of diverse social and ethnic groups. In this way, storytelling helps familiarize children with how groups of people, some of them which may be very different than the group children were raised in, perceive life and its events.
Simultaneously, while informing of group differences, storytelling serves the function of maintaining a sense of the human community by telling the story using universal themes common to all. In other words, storytelling operates to broaden children's view of the world and the diverse societies it while also emphasizing the social ties that bind communities and groups of people together."
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The Nature of American Literature, 2008.
An examination of American literature.
1,271 words (approx. 5.1 pages), 5 sources, APA, £ 30.95
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Abstract
This paper examines the nature of American literature. The paper explains that American literature, like many other nationalistic literary bodies has had an evolution that marks changing attitudes with regard to what is to be included in the voice of literature. The paper then looks at how the representation of both women and African-American writers is not the only body of inclusion, as contemporary movements have made significant strides toward the inclusion of almost every immigrant group into the canon of American literature and into the body of publishing in general in history and contemporary works. The paper also points out that the defining characteristics of what qualifies as American Literature is simply that it is a written form, poetry, prose or drama that conveys any point of view of the American experience of growth and change. The writer states that frequently some of the most fundamentally expressive forms of American literature are immigrant literature that explores the real and fictional development of the self, from an immigrant outsider to someone who feels as if they are an American, regardless of the outside view of themselves as a foreigner. The paper concludes that American literature should continue to be inclusive and representative of personal nationalistic growth, as a standard bearer for other forms of nationalistic literature.
From the Paper
"In all representations of immigrant literature there is a clear sense that at almost any given time in America there was a dominant or subjugated immigrant group that was struggling to be accepted by those who had immigrated one, two or three generations before them. America is a nation of immigrants and American literature is finally beginning to express this, without as much of the exclusionary literary academic influences. The transition of an immigrant into and "American" in the self is frequently one of the most important and influential expression of literature, from Latino American literature, to Asian American immigrant expressions."
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The History of English Literature, 2003.
A study of the history of English Literature, using the book "An Introduction to English Literature" by Jorge Luis Barges.
2,540 words (approx. 10.2 pages), 1 source, MLA, £ 52.95
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Abstract
A book review of Barges' "An Introduction to English Literature" designed to educate the reader about the rich history of English Literature. Further, the book itself is written by renown author Jorge Luis Barges. His analysis concerning English Literature is focused in: The Anglo Saxon Period; The Fourteenth Century; The Seventeenth Century; The Eighteenth Century; Nineteenth Century Prose; Nineteenth Century Poetry and the end of the Nineteenth Century. Such topics are useful when presenting the reader with a thorough understanding of the history of English literature and writers.
From the Paper
"The author?s preface begins with a general introduction on how essential English Literature is to our society as a whole. Borges also offers the reader a glimpse, of how he strategically compiled essential information concerning the history of English Literature, and writers in sixty-eight pages of text. Evidently, English Literature imparts a wealth of critical information. Further, Borges goes on to explain the significance of English literature: Of all the vernacular literatures which developed during the Middle Ages on the fringe of literature in Lain, that of England is one of the oldest. To put it another way, there are few other texts that can be attributed to the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eight centuries of our era."
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The Importance of Literature, 2001.
This paper analyzes and compares the following contemporary books: 'Trash Culture', 'The Death of Literature', 'The Medium is the Massage' and 'What was Literature?'.
1,605 words (approx. 6.4 pages), 12 sources, MLA, £ 36.95
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Abstract
This paper discusses four books about literature today. The author of the paper's ideas are the following: Richard Keller Simon's book 'Trash Culture' encourages studying classic literature and both its classical and contemporary interpretations. Leslie Fiedler's book 'What Was Literature?' states that the examination of the art novel is a pass? exercise; that our approach is flawed if we cannot cater to the detective novel, the pornographic fancy, or the comic strip. Marshall McLuhan's book 'The Medium is the Massage' discusses messages as well as the importance of themes in novels. Alvin Kernan's book' The Death of Literature' advocates negative views against television. The paper also includes examples of modern movies and television shows and compares them to certain books.
From the Paper
"Richard Keller Simon, in his book 'Trash Culture' advocates the simultaneous study of classic literature through its traditional forms and contemporary interpretation, highlighting the importance of promoting popular culture in conjunction with classic literature in order to comprehend the crucial perspective in which the books materialize. (R. K. Simon, California, 3-5) In rejecting Stallone's interpretation and condensation of the Iliad as not having the ability to convey any of the inherent messages of its classic counterpart, we deny popular culture as a possibly influential schooling device. (Spectrum, Australia, 1) "
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