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A Craving For History: Immigrant Themes In Jewish-American Literature, Jeffrey Saperstein

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a cross-generational study of three immigrant themes in Jewish-American literature: transformation, freedom, and connection. It covers a number of twentieth century writers whose central concerns revolve around issues of assimilation. Chapter I gives a brief overview of the topic.

Chapter II examines the various means by which the immigrant sought to achieve American status. Writers discussed include Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, Elias Tobenkin, Michael Gold, Norman Podhoretz, and Saul Bellow. Chapter III is an in-depth study of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), a rags-to-riches story of a poor immigrant's rise up the ladder of …

The Making Of An American Author: Melville And The Idea Of A National Literature, Daniel Ware Reagan

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I examine the ways in which the idea of a national literature affected the development of both Herman Melville's career and of his reputation through 1930. Melville, as a member of the New York literary group Young America, participated in an effort to define and create a national literature. His apprenticeship was served under the influence of Young America, and the group's ideas about the act of writing, the defining qualities of a national work, and the relationship of writer and reader influenced the shape of his career. Although Melville's exploration into the implications of Young America's …