| The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity, and the Zionist Moment Subjects: Jewish literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Jewish literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Hebrew literature Modern -- History and criticism; Zionism in literature; Masculinity in literature; Gender identity in literature; Je; The Universal Jew analyzes literary images of the Jewish nation and the Jewish national subject at Zionism's formative moment. In a series of original readings of late nineteenth-century texts--from George Eliot's Daniel Deronda to Theodor Herzl's Altneuland to the bildungsromane of Russian Hebrew and Yiddish writers--Mikhal Dekel demonstrates the aesthetic and political function of literary works in the making of early Zionist consciousness. More than half a century before the foundation of the State of Israel and prior to the establishment of the Zionist political movement, Zionism emerges as an imaginary concept in literary texts that create, facilitate, and naturalize the transition from Jewish-minority to Jewish-majority culture. The transition occurs, Dekel argues, mainly through the invention of male literary characters and narrators who come to represent "exemplary" persons or "man in general" for the emergent, still unformed national community. Mikhal Dekel is an assistant professor of English and comparative literature at The City College of New York, part of the City University of New York. |