Graduation Semester and Year

2010

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English

Department

English

First Advisor

Timothy R Morris

Abstract

The twentieth-century novelist Chaim Potok made central to his fiction what he called “culture war,” juxtaposing his Jewish-American characters' inner spiritual lives with key elements of Western secularism. In five of his novels -The Promise (1969), My Name Is Asher Lev (1972), The Book of Lights (1981), Davita's Harp (1985), and The Gift of Asher Lev (1990) - the protagonist comes under the influence of a character who can be styled “the Jacob figure.” This thesis argues that these characters not only echo various aspects of the biblical narratives about the Hebrew patriarch, thereby turning him into a meta-character in the novels, but also embody particular facets of the central culture clash in the individual books.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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