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- Title
In Search of "The Jew" in Djuna Barnes's "Nightwood": Jewishness, Antisemitism, Structure, and Style.
- Authors
Trubowitz, Lara
- Abstract
This article focuses on the book "Nightwood," by Djuna Barnes. Barnes opens the book with the story of Felix, a Viennese Jew, and his parents. However, Felix's importance to the book seems fleeting; by the second chapter, the novel's focus has already shifted to the two main female characters, Robin and Nora. It was Barnes's friend and fellow writer Emily Coleman who, prior to Nightwood's publication, had most adamantly insisted that the tragedy of Robin and Nora was the work's emotional core. The book focuses on the transformation of Jewishness from a racial category into a means to literary innovation. It defines Jewishness before it loosens that definition from Jews themselves and transmutes it into an element of style productive for Barnes's haunted narrative technique.
- Subjects
BARNES, Djuna, 1892-1982; NIGHTWOOD (Book : Barnes); JEWISH identity; LITERARY characters; AUTHORS; LITERATURE
- Publication
Modern Fiction Studies, 2005, Vol 51, Issue 2, p311
- ISSN
0026-7724
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/mfs.2005.0046