Product Description

In this text, literary critic Robert Alter explores the ways in which a range of iconoclastic 20th-century authors have put to use the stories, language and imagery of the Hebrew Bible. He makes a case against the prevalent notion of the canon as a vehicle of ideological enforcement.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2523211 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The elasticity of the term "canon" is the subject of Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture by literary critic Robert Alter (author of The Art of Biblical Narrative and translator of Genesis and The David Story). "Canon" originally referred only to the collection of sacred scriptures endorsed by ecclesiastical authority, but in recent decades has been adapted to a secular context, as a name for the collection of "great books" most venerated by mainstream cultural authorities.

Alter begins with a brief essay on the history of the canon of the Hebrew Bible; his subsequent readings of Kafka, Joyce, and the Russian poet Bialik (who wrote in Hebrew) concentrate on the ways in which each writer's creative strengths were enabled by their reference to the biblical canon. Together, the four essays present a compact, understated argument against the idea that canon is merely "a vehicle for theological truths", and praising "the perennial liveliness of the old canonical texts as a resource for imagination and moral reflection". --Michael Joseph Gross

About the Author
Robert Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his many previous books are The Art of Biblical Narrative, Necessary Angels, and most recently The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel.