This book primarily concerns the work of three prominent literary scholars, Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, and Sacvan Bercovitch, treating them as second-generation immigrant Jewish Americans. With at least two meanings of "transferring" in mind, the title alludes both to the historical, socio-cultural actualities of immigrancy, and to the psychoanalytic model used to describe the relations between these readers and the American texts they interpret. The central claim is that the theories and critical practices of Bercovitch, Bloom, and Cavell can be considered as the tools and tactics of an ambivalent, not yet fully realized desire for integration into America. Their cultural identity as members of the Jewish minority in America can thus still be seen to operate as a compelling source of anxiety and motivation.
ISBN: | 9780791426074 |
Publication date: | 14th September 1995 |
Author: | Rael Meyerowitz |
Publisher: | SUNY Press an imprint of State University of New York Press |
Format: | Hardback |
Pagination: | 302 pages |
Series: | SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture |
Genres: |
Social and cultural history |