How Jewish Refugee Critics Changed British Literary Criticism, 1970–2020

During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why. These outsiders went on to have an enormous impact on late 20th-century British literary culture. What was this impact? Why in the la...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in	Humanities (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 1 - 10
Main Author	Herman, David
Format	Journal Article
Language	English
Published	Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2020
Subjects	1970s (Decade) AD 1980s (Decade) AD 1990s (Decade) AD 20th century 21st century AD British literature culture encounter English literature Essays European Modernism exile Forecasts and trends French literature German literature Germanists History Influence Jewish people Jewish refugees Language Literary criticism Literary critics Martin Esslin Refugees Scholars United Kingdom United Kingdom > UK United States > US Russia
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Summary:	During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why. These outsiders went on to have an enormous impact on late 20th-century British literary culture. What was this impact? Why in the last third of the 20th century? Why did British literary culture become so much more receptive to critics like George Steiner, Gabriel Josipovici, Martin Esslin and SS Prawer and to a new canon of continental Jewish writers? The obstacles to Jewish refugee critics were formidable. Yet their work on writers like Kafka, Brecht and Paul Celan, and thinkers like Heidegger and Lukacs had a huge impact. They also broke the post-war silence about the Holocaust and moved the Jewish Bibl from the margins of English-speaking culture.
ISSN:	2076-0787 2076-0787
DOI:	10.3390/h9030080