Book Information
A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch
Read Inside
2013
198 pp. 6 illus. 6x9"
978-1-61168-355-4
E-book, 978-1-61168-356-1
Hardcover, 978-1-61168-354-7
A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch
Ilana Szobel
The work of renowned Israeli poet, translator, peace activist, and 1998 Israel Prize laureate Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936–2005) portrays the emotional structure of a traumatized and victimized female character. Ilana Szobel’s book, the first full-length study of Ravikovitch in English, offers a theoretical discussion of the poetics of trauma and the politics of victimhood, as well as a rethinking of the notions of activity and passivity, strength and weakness. Analyzing the deep structure embodied in Ravikovitch’s work, Szobel unearths the interconnectedness of Ravikovitch’s private-poetic subjectivity and Israeli national identity, and shows how her unique poetics helps readers overcome cultural biases and sympathetically engage otherness.
"Scholars of modern Hebrew literature all agree that Ravikovitch's poetry towers above any [Hebrew] poetry written by a woman that emerged in the State of Israel, and that she is one of its leading poets, along with the likes of Yehudah Amichai and Nathan Zach. This book thus introduces the English reader to some of the best poetry created in the twentieth century... Szobel's groundbreaking book is innovative, profound, extremely intelligent and captivating."
Nili Scharf Gold, University of Pennsylvania
Ilana Szobel is assistant professor on the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Chair in Hebrew Literature at Brandeis University. She received her doctorate from the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.
A Poetics of Trauma is published jointly with Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's Series on Jewish Women.