The Fiction of the State - (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture) by Ofer Dynes (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In a compelling new interpretation, this book locates the origins of modern Jewish literature within the turbulent events which reshaped Europe during the late eighteenth century: the partitions of Poland, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars. As Austria, Russia, and Prussia consolidated their rule over the Polish lands and banned most forms of political expression, literature became a central venue for reflecting on the new political order. Ofer Dynes argues that Jewish intellectuals turned to fiction--prose, poetry, and drama--to engage in political debates and make sense of new state structures. Through their writing, Jewish intellectuals positioned themselves as interpreters, mediators, and, at times, collaborators with the new imperial powers.

Combining meticulous archival research and nuanced textual readings, Dynes contextualizes modern Jewish literature as rooted in the awareness of major political upheaval. Rather than an internal Jewish struggle between tradition and modernity, he presents Hebrew and Yiddish literature as a field of negotiation among multiple local and imperial belongings. Radically expanding the literary canon, he uncovers a diverse and often unexpected array of figures and texts, including a Catholic Austrian bureaucrat who wrote poetry in Yiddish, a Prussian rabbi and French count who jointly composed a poem to the Russian Tsar; and a Hebrew novel born out of its author's collaboration with the secret police. Connecting Jewish texts with broader trends in European history, this book presents an untold story of how Jewish writers used literature to grapple with a shifting political landscape in the age of Enlightenment and empires.

Review Quotes

"Dynes offers a compelling account of how closely Jewish authors followed the reconfigurations of statehood in eastern Europe around and after 1800. A pathbreaking exploration of the interdependence of literary creation and political involvement with the potential to reshape the field."--François Guesnet, University College London

"Dynes's illuminating book dismantles the accepted opposition between tradition and modernity, instead presenting Jewish textual production in the early 19th century as a field of negotiation between allegiances to different legal and political realities. In Dynes's narrative, the writings of rabbis, maskilim, tsadikim, and converts serve as tools for mutual interpretation, revealing the role of storytelling as an instrument for the realization of new political orders."--Svetlana Natkovich, Haifa University

"One of the most stimulating and original works of Jewish literary, intellectual, and cultural history that I've seen in a long time. This book will become a generative source for all further work on the Jewish encounter with absolutism, the Enlightenment, and empire in the 18th and 19th centuries."--Kenneth B. Moss, University of Chicago

About the Author

Ofer Dynes is the Leonard Kaye Assistant Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has co-edited a volume of Prooftexts with Naomi Seidman, The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Literature in Europe (2020).