Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T05:33:46.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Did pre-Revival Hebrew literature have its own langue? Quotation and improvization in Mendele Mokher Sefarim

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Lewis H. Glinert
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the history of Hebrew letters, few dates have so cavalierly been invested with literary and linguistic significance as 1886/7, the publication date of Mendele's short story BeSeter Ra'am.

Such scholars of literature as Ravnitzki, Klausner and Werses have hailed its style as the pointer or veritable trigger to a redeployment of the traditional ‘synthetic’ (composite Biblical/post-Biblical) Hebrew style—instead of being confined to the registers of non-fiction, it now rose to supplant Biblical Hebrew as the standard for narrative prose. Some historians of language have gone so far as to present it as a total innovation (for its time) in that the aforegoing Haskalah writers had adhered almost exclusively to a Biblical manner.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , October 1988 , pp. 413 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bendavid, A. 1967. Leshon mikra uleshon hakhamim. Tel Aviv: Devir.Google Scholar
Fichman, Y. 1958. Shalom Yaakov Abramowitsch. (Biographical introduction to collected works of Mendele.) Tel Aviv: Devir.Google Scholar
Glinert, L. H. Forthcoming. ‘Li-mekor ha-'iwit ha-hadasha ha-meduberet: ’iyyunim ba-tahbir ha-samuy shel “left ha-taf” le-david yelin’, Leshonenu.Google Scholar
Halkin, S. 1954 [=1960]. Maw la-sifrut ha-'iwit. Jerusalem: Akademon.Google Scholar
Klausner, Y. 1950. Historya shel ha-sifrut ha-'ivrit ha-hadasha VI. (1st ed.) Jerusalem: Magnes.Google Scholar
Merkin, R. 1978a. ‘Rishwney ritmus ve-tahbir mi-leshon ha-mekorot bi-khetivato shel mendele mokher sefarim,’ in Mehkarim ba-mikra u-va-mizrah ha-likhon. (Studies presented to S. Loewenstamm.) Jerusalem: 269–77.Google Scholar
Merkin, R. 1978b. The vocabulary of the Hebrew writings of Sh. Y. Abramowitz: A computer-aided analysis of lexical, grammatical and stylistic aspects. Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Rabin, C. 1985. ‘The origins of present-day Hebrew’, Ariel, 59: 4–13.Google Scholar
Ravnitzki, Y. H. 1907. ‘Al ha-signon ha-ivri šel Mendele Mokher Seforim’ [On the Hebrew style of Mendele Mokher Seforim], Ha-Omer, vol. 1, section II, 23–31.Google Scholar
de Saussure, F. 1949. Cours de linguistique generate. (4th ed.) Paris.Google Scholar
Shaked, G. 1965. Beyn sehok le-dema’—’iyyunim bi-ytsirato shel mendele mokher sefarim. Agudat ha-sofrim bi-ysrael.Google Scholar
Shahevitch, B. 1967. ‘Arba’ leshonot: ’iyyunim shelsifrut bi-leshon ha-maskilim ’al-pi ‘ha-me’assef’ Molad, 212: 236–42.Google Scholar
Shahevitch, B. 1971. ‘Beyn ’amur la-'amira: le-mahuta shel ha-melitsa,’ Hasifrul, 2:3: 664–8.Google Scholar
Werses, S. 1971. ‘Mendele Mokher Seforim’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 11, 1317–23. Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Yitzhaki, Y. 1970. ‘De'oteyhem shel sofrey ha-haskala ’al ha-lashon ha-'ivrit,’ Leshonenu, 34: 287–305; 35: 39–59, 140–54.Google Scholar