Buch, Englisch, 448 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm
Buch, Englisch, 448 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm
Reihe: Jews and Judaism: History and Culture Series
ISBN: 978-0-8173-2034-8
Verlag: UNIV OF ALABAMA PR
Published serially in the spiritualist journal Banner of Light in 1860, Cosella Wayne, or Will and Destiny is the first coming-of-age novel to depict Jews in the United States and transforms what we know about the history of early American Jewish literature. The novel never appeared in book form, went unmentioned in Jewish newspapers of the day, and studies of nineteenth-century American Jewish literature ignore it completely. Yet the novel anticipates central themes of American Jewish writing: intermarriage, generational tension, family dysfunction, Jewish-Christian relations, immigration, poverty, the place of women in Jewish life, the nature of romantic love, and the tension between destiny and free will.
The narrative recounts a relationship between an abusive Jewish father and the rebellious daughter he molested as well as that daughter's efforts at finding a place in the complex social fabric of nineteenth-century America. It is also unique in portraying such themes as an unmarried Jewish woman's descent into poverty, her forlorn years as a starving orphaned seamstress, her apostasy and return to Judaism, and her quest to be both Jewish and a spiritualist at one and the same time.
Jonathan Sarna, who introduces the volume, discovered Cosella Wayne while pursuing research at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. This edition is supplemented with Cora Wilburn's recently rediscovered diary, selections from which are reprinted in the appendix. Together, these materials help to situate Cosella Wayne within the life and times of one of nineteenth-century American Jewry's least known and yet most prolific female authors.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
- Acknowledgments
- Editor's Introduction
- A Note on the Text
- Cosella Wayne: Or, Will and Destiny
- Introduction
- 1. A Wandering Childhood
- 2. The Rhine Voyage
- 3. Foreboding
- 4. The Watcher by the Tomb
- 5. The Jewish Betrothal
- 6. Awakening
- 7. The Dawn of the New Life
- 8. The Dream's Reply
- 9. Bereavement
- 10. The Web of Destiny
- 11. The Second Sorrow
- 12. Light on the Pathway
- 13. The Teachings of the Fathers
- 14. Temptation and Trial
- 15. The Virgin's Shrine
- 16. The Step into the World
- 17. Spirit Teachings
- 18. Changes
- 19. Retribution
- 20. Manasseh's Letter
- 21. Above the Clouds of Earth
- 22. The Realities of Life
- 23. Toil and Suffering
- 24. The Mission of the Beautiful
- 25. The Hour before Day
- 26. Unrecognized
- 27. Realization
- 28. The River of Death, and the Waters of Life
- 29. Fraternal and Heavenly Union
- Notes to Cosella Wayne
- Selections from the Diary of Cora Wilburn (1844-1848)