The Golem in Jewish American Literature

The Golem in Jewish American Literature explores the golem in the fiction of Thane Rosenbaum, Nomi Eve and Steve Stern as well as writers such as Michael Chabon. Nicola Morris sees this clay humanoid, created in Jewish legend for practical and spiritual purposes, as a metaphor for power and powerlessness and for the complexities and responsibilities surrounding the act of creation. Further, she employs the golem figure as a device to examine the problematic Holocaust representation in the second generation, the uncertain boundaries between fiction and historiography, the ethics of intertextuality and the writer's responsibility to literary, folkloric and oral sources. Morris concludes with an impassioned plea for the responsible uses of power, technology and language.

Autorentext

The Author: Nicola Morris teaches in Goddard College s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program and in the State University of New York College at Cortland s English Department. She received her Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University, State University of New York. Morris has published criticism, essays, poems and stories in literary and professional journals and anthologies.