Boleslaw Prus and the Jews shows the complexity of the so-called "Jewish question" in nineteenth-century Congress Poland and especially its significance in Prus' social concept, reflected in his extensive body of journalistic work, fiction, and treatises. The book traces Prus' evolving worldview toward Jews, from his support of the Assimilation Program in his early years to his eventual support of Zionism. These contrasting ideas show us the complexity of the discourse on Jewish issues from the individual perspective of a significant writer of the time, as well as the dynamics of the Jewish modernization process in a "non-existent" partitioned Poland. The portrait of Prus that emerges is surprisingly ambivalent.
Autorentext
Agnieszka Friedrich is a lecturer and academic at the University of Gdansk. Her research focuses on Jewish issues in Polish literature and press between 1863 and 1914. She is the author of dozens of articles published in Polish and English in Studia Judaica, Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia, Polin, East European Jewish Affairs, Kesher, and Kwartalnik Historii Zydów. She is currently working on the manuscript Dreyfus Affair in Polish Press.
Inhalt
Table of Contents
Preface to the English Edition
Introduction
1. Prus's Predecessors and Contemporaries on the Jewish Question
2. Prus's Social Reflections
3. Prus on the Traditional Aspects of the Jewish Question
4. Prus on the Modern Aspects of the Jewish Question
Conclusion
Bibliography