Book contents
- Philip Roth in Context
- Philip Roth in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- A Note on References and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Life and Literary Contexts
- Part II Critical Contexts
- Part III Geographical Contexts
- Part IV Theoretical Contexts
- Part V Jewish American Identity
- Chapter 20 Roth as “Jewish American Writer”
- Chapter 21 Judaism and Secularism
- Chapter 22 Roth and the Holocaust
- Chapter 23 Antisemitism
- Chapter 24 The Black-Jewish Matrix
- Part VI Gender and Sexuality
- Part VII Political Contexts
- Part VIII Roth’s Legacy
- Primary Bibliography
- Selected Secondary Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 24 - The Black-Jewish Matrix
from Part V - Jewish American Identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2021
- Philip Roth in Context
- Philip Roth in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- A Note on References and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Life and Literary Contexts
- Part II Critical Contexts
- Part III Geographical Contexts
- Part IV Theoretical Contexts
- Part V Jewish American Identity
- Chapter 20 Roth as “Jewish American Writer”
- Chapter 21 Judaism and Secularism
- Chapter 22 Roth and the Holocaust
- Chapter 23 Antisemitism
- Chapter 24 The Black-Jewish Matrix
- Part VI Gender and Sexuality
- Part VII Political Contexts
- Part VIII Roth’s Legacy
- Primary Bibliography
- Selected Secondary Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Crucially, moreover, Roth wrote across a remarkable and volatile period in Jewish American history throughout which race was explicitly foregrounded as an issue. These are events from which his fiction –despite its markedly unstable rapport with reality – should not be abstracted. Yet a curiously inverted relationship reigns between the titanic number of Roth’s black characters, and the critical Roth scholarship on race. Articles and chapters on race represent the barest handful of what is otherwise a prodigious body of criticism. Recently, Philip Roth Studies devoted a special issue to “Roth and Race,” but no one has yet published an entire book that systematically treats and charts the appearance of characters of color or the numerous meanings of race in Roth.In this essay we hope to tease out some productive avenues toward such a text.
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- Information
- Philip Roth in Context , pp. 252 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021