AL45 S.Y. Agnon’s Neo-Midrash

This course on the writings of Hebrew literature’s only Nobel laureate. We will cover an array of topics and issues while encountering and exploring his writing, including: (1) Agnon’s unique use of intertextuality, his crafting of a nexus of sources reaching back to Biblical and Rabbinic literature through and including the Hasidic writings and those of the Jewish Enlightenment to craft his modern stories; (2) Agnon’s writing as an exemplar of the “re-awoken” Hebrew language and his role in that renaissance; (3) Agnon’s major themes: The tension and transition between tradition and modernity, between the old world and the new, between the Diaspora and the renewed Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael.