City Codes is a study of the representation of the city in the modern novel that takes difference as its point of departure, so that cities are read according to the cultural and social position of the urbanite. These urban narratives are analysed in the context of a cultural repertoire of city codes, from the architectural features of window and street to the social and historical signs of the landmark and the passer-by, with the emphasis on the subject's construction of his or her place as shaped by history, politics, nationality, gender, class and race. The study moves from boundaries inscribed onto the cityscape to distances experienced by the city dwellers; its 'real' and textual cities are Warsaw, Jerusalem, New York, Chicago, Paris, London and Dublin. The novels discussed are by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Amos Oz, Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, Henry James, Henry Roth, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

Jewish Americans produced some of the most important writing in the U.S. in the twentieth century. This Companion addresses the distinctive Jewish American contribution to American literary criticism, poetry and popular culture. It establishes the broadest possible context for the discussion of Jewish American identity as it intersects with the corpus of American literature. Featuring a chronology and guide to further reading, the volume is valuable to scholars and students alike.

Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, praised when it first appeared in the 1930s, neglected for decades, and reissued to wide acclaim in the 1960s, has been finally hailed as the finest Jewish-American novel of the first half of the century and one of the richest modernist novels to appear in America. The introduction by Hana Wirth-Nesher locates the novel in its cultural context and in terms of contemporary debates about ethnic literature, minority writing, and the problem of representativeness. Leslie Fiedler, who played an instrumental role in the book's reissuance, offers a new reading in light of the work's canonization. Mario Materassi traces the controversial history of its reception, and Ruth Wisse connects the immigration theme with the existential hero. Each of the following three essays addresses the question of modernism from a different perspective: Brian McHale focuses on Roth's modernist rather than postmodernist poetic, Karen Lawrence on the maternal and paternal powers that forge the inner life so basic to the modernist novel, and Werner Sollors on the "ethnic modernism" of second-generation immigration literature. Thus the volume sets out to consider Roth's hybrid status - as an American writer, a Jewish writer, and a European modernist.

City Codes is a study of the representation of the city in the modern novel that takes difference as its point of departure, so that cities are read according to the cultural and social position of the urbanite. These urban narratives are analysed in the context of a cultural repertoire of city codes, from the architectural features of window and street to the social and historical signs of the landmark and the passer-by, with the emphasis on the subject's construction of his or her place as shaped by history, politics, nationality, gender, class and race. The study moves from boundaries inscribed onto the cityscape to distances experienced by the city dwellers; its 'real' and textual cities are Warsaw, Jerusalem, New York, Chicago, Paris, London and Dublin. The novels discussed are by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Amos Oz, Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, Henry James, Henry Roth, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

This History offers an unparalleled examination of all aspects of Jewish American literature. Jewish writing has played a central role in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation. This body of writing has also enriched global Jewish literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture. Written by a host of leading scholars, The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature offers an array of approaches that contribute to current debates about ethnic writing, minority discourse, transnational literature, gender studies, and multilingualism. This History takes a fresh look at celebrated authors, introduces new voices, locates Jewish American literature on the map of American ethnicity as well as the spaces of exile and diaspora, and stretches the boundaries of American literature beyond the Americas and the West.

Henry Roth's Call it Sleep, praised when it first appeared in the 1930s, neglected for decades, and reissued to wide acclaim in the 1960s, has been finally hailed as the finest Jewish-American novel of the first half of the century and one of the richest modernist novels to appear in America. The introduction and essays locate the novel in its cultural context and in terms of contemporary debates about ethnic literature, minority writing, modernism and canonization. Thus the volume sets out to consider Roth's hybrid status--as an American writer, a Jewish writer, and a European modernist.

Jewish Americans produced some of the most important writing in the U.S. in the twentieth century. This Companion addresses the distinctive Jewish American contribution to American literary criticism, poetry and popular culture. It establishes the broadest possible context for the discussion of Jewish American identity as it intersects with the corpus of American literature. Featuring a chronology and guide to further reading, the volume is valuable to scholars and students alike.

""Call It English" is an extraordinary book that will force a revision of our understanding of English-language Jewish American literature from the perspective of multilingualism. Cogently argued and vividly written, it offers a substantially new approach to the field and fresh and compelling readings of major authors from Abraham Cahan to Philip Roth."--Werner Sollors, Harvard University, author of "Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature"

"A book, as its author says, about forgetting and remembering, "Call It English" takes us on a marvelous journey into different territories of fiction, above all those where writing and identity struggle to survive and make themselves new. In this perspective Jewish American writing appears as both more various and more continuous than we have thought, and if we continue to call its dominant idiom English we shall do so now in full awareness of the many lives and languages that are hiding in that name."--Michael Wood, Princeton University, author of "The Road to Delphi" and "The Magician's Doubts" (Princeton)

"This is simply a stunning book, and it is the book that Hana Wirth-Nesher's life experience and intellectual formation have meant her to write. There is no other student of American Jewish literature who possesses the tools and scholarly rigor to take on this topic, and there is no one else who delivers as abundantly on this promise. What at first seems peripheral or vestigial or even pedantic--the uses of Hebrew and Yiddish in American Jewish literature--is shown in a completely persuasive argument to turn to be of the first importance. In that sense, the book is path-breaking and will rewritethe map of the field."--Alan Mintz, Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature, Jewish Theological Seminary

"Call it Yiddish-, Hebrew-, German-, Polish-, or dialect-inflected, twentieth-century Jewish American literature emerges as uniquely multilingual in Hana Wirth-Nesher's groundbreaking book. "Call It English" brilliantly interprets 'American literature with a Jewish accent' for readers interested in the history of the novel and the aesthetic impact of transnationalism, translation, and diaspora."--Susan Gubar, Distinguished Professor of English, Indiana University

""Call It English" makes a rich, comprehensive, and welcome contribution not only to the study of American Jewish literature but more broadly to our understanding of the evolution of transnational, multicultural American history. It is unlike any other critical work on American Jewish literature. Given her command of Yiddish and Hebrew, as well as her deep familiarity with American literature generally and American Jewish literature in particular, Wirth-Nesher is unusually well-positioned, and she has made the most of her scholarly and analytical skills in a book that is original from start to finish."--Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles, author of "To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature"

This History offers an unparalleled examination of all aspects of Jewish American literature. Jewish writing has played a central role in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation. This body of writing has also enriched global Jewish literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture. Written by a host of leading scholars, The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature offers an array of approaches that contribute to current debates about ethnic writing, minority discourse, transnational literature, gender studies, and multilingualism. This History takes a fresh look at celebrated authors, introduces new voices, locates Jewish American literature on the map of American ethnicity as well as the spaces of exile and diaspora, and stretches the boundaries of American literature beyond the Americas and the West.