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Adam Rovner

Bio: Adam Rovner is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Hebrew literature & Shadow (psychology). The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 7 publications receiving 53 citations.

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TL;DR: In this paper, the development of the genre of alternate history, also called allohistory, is discussed and the authors argue that it may be treated as a philosophical genre that meditates on contingency and determinism.
Abstract: The article sketches the development of the genre of alternate history, also called allohistory and argues that allohistory may be treated as a philosophical genre that meditates on contingency and determinism. It examines two contemporary allohistorical novels, Israeli author Nava Semel’s IsraIsland (2005) and American writer Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), that comment on the role of Israel in the Jewish imagination. The thematic and formal elements of these texts reveal how a version of allohistory can also function as a kind of detective fiction that may influence the reception of historiographic narratives.

14 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper investigated whether comic works of Holocaust literature really pose significant ethical problems and concluded that humour is an inappropriate means of representing the cruelties inflicted by the Nazis and the suffering experienced by their victims.
Abstract: The incongruity of imagining the Holocaust through the use of comic conventions is striking. The atrocities of the Holocaust do not immediately present themselves as likely backdrops for humour. Yet there are many such works and their number is growing. Critical and popular success have greeted both cinematic and literary examples of Holocaust humour. Nonetheless, even where humour may be wrung from destruction, some critics maintain that humour is an inappropriate means of representing the cruelties inflicted by the Nazis and the suffering experienced by their victims. Such objections amount to the charge that humour is unethical given the scope of the atrocities. This article investigates whether comic works of Holocaust literature really pose significant ethical problems.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the relationship between aesthetic modernism and collectivist nationalism is explored in the context of early European literary modernisms and their associated socio-political contexts, and the authors conclude that scholars can profitably locate Jabotinsky's creative output of the 1920s within the nexus of early aesthetic modernist and collectivism.
Abstract: Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky's texts of the 1920s offer compelling examples of the tensions endemic to aesthetic modernism and inherent in Jewish nationalist discourse during the interwar period. This essay discusses Jabotinsky's Atlas (1925), his unproduced film script A Galilean Romance (1924–1926), and his anthemic poem "Two Banks Has the Jordan" (1929). While the ideological value of the works examined is self-evident, the artistic features of Jabotinsky's work have received scant attention. This essay reveals Jabotinsky's indebtedness to themes and techniques identified with early European literary modernisms and their associated socio-political contexts. The article concludes that scholars can profitably locate Jabotinsky's creative output of the 1920s within the nexus of early aesthetic modernism and collectivist nationalism.

7 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jul 2015-Shofar
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a general theory of microfiction that focuses on the formal elements of the genre's poetics, arguing that a symmetry exists between microfiction's contracted spatialization, and the compression-and hence violation-of the reader's anticipation.
Abstract: This article presents a general theory of microfiction that focuses on the formal elements of the genre's poetics. My analysis argues that a symmetry exists between microfiction's contracted spatialization, and the compression-and hence violation-of temporal norms of the reader's anticipation. The violation of conventional reading anticipation makes microfiction seem not only to be new but also transgressive. Indeed, much microfiction is transgressive of prevailing ideologies of time that are premised on the existence of contingency and the efficacy of human agency. This article takes the work of Israeli microfiction author Alex Epstein as its touchstone while advancing a framework for a theory of the genre.(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)INTRODUCTIONThis article offers a conception of microfiction that attempts to redress critical indifference to the genre in the United States and Israel by focusing on the work of Alex Epstein, contemporary Hebrew literature's major figure in the art of minimal narratives. Microfiction assumes many aliases in the United States, including minifiction, sudden fiction, minute stories, and flash fiction, among others.1 In Israel the prevailing term is ktsartsarim ("short-shorts" ...), following the use of the word in the title of a pioneering anthology (1999) edited by scholars Hanan Hever and Moshe Ron, 50 Yisraelim Ktsartsarim2 )50 ...). Recent decades have witnessed an abundance of ktsartsarim in Hebrew letters, including work by authors such as Yosl Birstein, Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret, Reuven Miran, and Alex Epstein, all of whom Hever and Ron include in their volume. While modern Hebrew literature contains scattered feuilletonist short-shorts and other ktsartsarim variants that predate the appearance of Hever and Ron's collection, the form can only properly be said to have emerged in the last two decades of the twentieth century.3 Despite the growing familiarity of the term ktsartsarim in Israel, I exclusively use the term "microfiction" to avoid terminological profusion, even at the risk of repetition and marginalizing the Hebrew.Alex Epstein was born in St. Petersburg in 1971 and immigrated with his family to Israel as a young boy. He began publishing poetry and prose in the early 1990s, but it took more than a decade for him to find his niche as a writer of microfiction. Since the early twenty-first century, Epstein has occupied a curious position in contemporary Hebrew literature. His work has received both popular and critical acclaim and been published by some of the leading houses in Israel. Yet Epstein's work resists-both formally and thematically-the realism and political engagement of the country's more celebrated authors. Epstein likewise remains somewhat aloof from the Tel Aviv literary scene, though he is even more distant from the Russian emigre community. His work cannot fairly be said to be marked by the concerns of the latter. However, there is a certain affinity of form between Epstein's microfiction and some pieces by Felix Krivin, a well-known author from the former Soviet Union who writes solely in Russian and who has resided in Israel since the late 1990s. While Epstein speaks Russian, he cannot read Russian literature with ease and has reported that he is unfamiliar with Krivin's work.4Several critics have noted that Epstein's work is more profoundly influenced by Hebrew translations of Latin American writers-especially Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Augusto Monterroso-than by Israeli or Russian literary traditions.5 In several important ways, Epstein may be considered an idiosyncratic Israeli talent. If his output can be said to be indicative of any wider trend in Hebrew letters, it would be in his rejection of the parochial in favor of a vibrant cosmopolitanism. This paper follows Epstein's creative lead by avoiding the inward-looking parameters-the sociopolitical and sociocultural-of much critical discourse on Hebrew literature. …

6 citations


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature as discussed by the authors, and this final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeure's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.
Abstract: In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.

2,047 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the light of contemporary ideas about causation, determinism, accident, objectivity, and the function and role, if any, of the individual person in history, ideas thin out.
Abstract: Among the many things which distinguish man from the lower animals and perhaps in a more spectacular but less extensive way distinguish man at an advanced level of culture from primitive man is the capacity to use the recorded experience of the past. This can help determine his actions in the present and thus determine in part what kind of future the world will see. The codification of knowledge of the past and its interpretation constitute the material of history. Doctrines and beliefs, various schools, and ideological sets about history determine each period's interpretation of what has gone on in the past. For instance, how may one reconcile the doctrinal myth of progress with the fix that the world is in now? In the light of contemporary ideas about causation, determinism, accident, objectivity, and the function and role, if any, of the individual person in history, ideas thin out. Professor

535 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Booth argues that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners as mentioned in this paper. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality.
Abstract: In \"The Company We Keep\", Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of this particular encounter with this particular work. Yet it will give up the old hope for definitive judgments of 'good' work and 'bad'. Rather it will be a conversation about many kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us as we read? Who am I, during the hours of reading or listening? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends? Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: 'friendship with books', 'the exchange of gifts', 'the colonizing of worlds', 'the constitution of commonwealths'. He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain.

446 citations

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The reading for the plot design and intention in narrative is universally compatible with any devices to read and it is set as public so you can download it instantly.
Abstract: reading for the plot design and intention in narrative is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly. Our book servers saves in multiple locations, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Merely said, the reading for the plot design and intention in narrative is universally compatible with any devices to read.

264 citations