Shmuel Yosef Agnon Summary

The Israeli author Shmuel Yoseph Agnon (1888-1970) is noted for his folkloric yet sophisticated novels. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966.On July 17, 1888, S. Y. Agnon was born Shmuel... Read more

In the following excerpt, Leviant observes that Agnon incorporated some of his favorite themes into the narratives of Twenty-One Stories, a collection that the critic perceives as steeped in Hebrew hi... Read more

In the following essay, Mazor uses the stories "Between Two Cities" ("Ben sete 'arim") and "Two Scholars Who Lived in Our Town" ("Sne talmide ha... Read more

In the following essay, Kubovy provides a psychological analysis of the protagonist's jealousy in "The Doctor and His Divorcée." There are many different interpretations... Read more

In the following essay, Bodoff interprets Betrothed as a symbolic tale in which the modern Jew (represented by the protagonist Jacob) is torn between Hebraism (in the figure of Shoshanah) and the appe... Read more

In the following essay, Sokoloff offers a feminist reading of the novella In the Prime of Her Life. While the last fifteen years have witnessed an upsurge of interest in feminist critical thought a... Read more

In the following excerpt, Alter calls attention to Agnon's intermingling of ancient Hebrew and Greek worlds in Betrothed, a strategy that enhances the story's fabulous quality, according... Read more

In the following essay, Knieger attempts to define the central theme of the story "The Face and the Image" ("Ha-panim la-panim"). One of the Agnon stones in Twenty-One S... Read more

In the following essay, Fuchs maintains that an understanding of Edo and Enam as an ironic story enables the reader to make sense of the story's "strangeness," namely its "... Read more

In the following essay, Fuchs focuses on the protagonist—both his characterization and behavior—in Forevermore (Ad Olam) in order to reveal "the underlying irony of the story, whi... Read more

Critical Essay by Naomi Shepherd [Agnon] is a writer of startling and total originality, resembling other Hebrew writers of the century almost as faintly as he does his European contemporaries. He... Read more

In the following review of an Agnon short story, Knieger calls attention to the Hebrew meaning of the phrase “face-to-face,” concluding that the narrator is facing his own isolation from... Read more

In the following excerpt from the introduction to her full-length semiotic study of Agnon's writings, Hoffman reviews her complex textual approach, encompassing psychoanalysis, traditional Hebr... Read more

In the following essay, Appelfeld disputes other critics who say that Agnon exemplifies the “sacred” in Judaism vs. the “profane” of secularism, asserting that Agnon had a ... Read more

In the following excerpt from an essay on contemporary Hebrew literature, Riggan calls Agnon the best of the “conservatives” who appreciated the nuances of the Hebrew language tradition.... Read more

In the following essay from a collection which offers several commentaries about specific works of Hebrew literature, Roskies discusses the complexities of an Agnon short story, “The Sense of S... Read more

In the following review of Estherlein, a compilation of Agnon's letters to his wife from 1924-1931, Green states that Agnon reveals few literary secrets but offers insights into his thinking ab... Read more

In the following essay, Mazor examines the paradoxical nature of the composition of two Agnon stories. “Do forgive me. Perhaps I cast a shade upon Agnon … but I came here to speak abo... Read more

In the following chapter from a book of essays on Franz Kafka, Band reviews previous criticism comparing Kafka's and Agnon's writings, arguing that many of the alleged similarities in th... Read more

In the following essay, Ben-Dov discusses the “assertive mother” theme in A Simple Story and describes Agnon's use of repetition or variation of motifs to highlight the rivalry be... Read more