Tubercular Capital: Illness and the Conditions of Modern Jewish Writing (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture)

Synopsis

At the turn of the twentieth century, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death across America, Europe, and the Russian Empire. The incurable disease gave rise to a culture of convalescence, creating new opportunities for travel and literary reflection. Tubercular Capital tells the story of Yiddish and Hebrew writers whose lives and work were transformed by a tubercular diagnosis. Moving from eastern Europe to the Italian Peninsula, and from Mandate Palestine to the Rocky Mountains, Sunny S. Yudkoff follows writers including Sholem Aleichem, Raḥel Bluvshtein, David Vogel, and others as they sought "the cure" and drew on their experiences of illness to hone their literary craft. Combining archival research with literary analysis, Yudkoff uncovers how tuberculosis came to function as an agent of modern Jewish literature. The illness would provide the means for these suffering writers to grow their reputations and find financial backing. It served a central role in the public fashioning of their literary personas and ushered Jewish writers into a variety of intersecting English, German, and Russian literary traditions. Tracing the paths of these writers, Tubercular Capital reconsiders the foundational relationship between disease, biography, and literature.

Copyright:

2018

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781503607330

Related ISBNs:

9781503605152, 9781503605152

Publisher:

Stanford University Press

Date of Addition:

05/26/22

Copyrighted By:

the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Literature and Fiction, Language Arts

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.