BIOGRAPHIES

Goldberg, Isaac. “Shmuel Yosef Agnon: Israel's Nobel Laureate.” AB Bookman's Weekly 87 (April 1 1991): 1267.

Brief overview of Agnon's life and work.

Lutske, Harvey. “S. Y. Agnon.” In History in Their Hands: A Book of Jewish Autographs, pp. 173-74. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson Inc., 1996.

Brief sketch about Agnon.

CRITICISM

Aberbach, David. At the Handles of the Lock: Themes in the Fiction of S. Y. Agnon. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, 221 p.

A study of themes in Agnon's fiction, emphasizing the blurring of distinctions among author, narrator, and character.

Almog, Shulamit. “Literary Legal Utopias—Alexander's Visit to Kasiah and Law at the End of Days.” Utopian Studies 12, no. 2 (2001): 164-173.

Comparison between an ancient legend about Alexander the Great and a short story by Agnon, indicating that the idea of a utopia is not inherently lawless.

Alter, Robert. “On S. Y. Agnon.” Commentary 56 (fall, 1989): 619-30.

Discusses Agnon's unfinished novel, Shira, as a commentary on the role of art in relation to reality.

Bar-Adon, Aaron. “S. Y. Agnon and the Revival of Modern Hebrew.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 14 (1973): 147-75.

A study of Agnon's importance to the renewed interest in modern Hebrew.

Baumgarten, Murray. “Mirror of Words: Language in Agnon and Borges.” Comparative Literature 31, no. 4 (fall 1979): 351-66.

Compares the works of Agnon and Jorge Luis Borges, with emphasis on each author's theories of and uses of language.

Ben-Dov, Nitza. Agnon's Art of Indirection: Uncovering Latent Content in the Fiction of S. Y. Agnon. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993, 167 p.

Study of hidden meanings in Agnon's fiction.

Bodoff, Lippman. “Kabbalistic Feminism in Agnon's Betrothed.” Judaism 42 (fall, 1993): 423-37.

A look at the ways Agnon uses kabbalistic themes in his portrayal of Jewish women.

Fisch, Harold. “The Dreaming Narrator in S. Y. Agnon.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 4 (1970): 49-68.

Lengthy article about the role of the narrator in Agnon's fiction.

Fleck, Jeffrey. “Fiction, Fable, and the Face of a Generation: S. Y. Agnon's Only Yesterday.” Hebrew Annual Review 7 (1983): 69-88.

Discusses Only Yesterday and its portrayal of conflicts between tradition and modernity, as well as the dialectic between history and symbol, in postwar Palestine.

Green, Sharon. Not a Simple Story: Love and Politics in a Modern Hebrew Novel. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001, 167 p.

Study of the manifestations and frustrations of love relationships in Agnon's fiction.

Greenstein, Michael. “Breaking the Mosaic Code: Jewish Literature vs. the Law.” Mosaic 27 (September 1994): 87-106.

A discussion of the ways several Jewish writers, such as Agnon, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Saul Bellow, both embrace and undermine Jewish law.

Hoffman, Anne Golomb. “Agnon for All Seasons: Recent Trends in Criticism.” Prooftexts 11, no. 1 (January 1991): 80-94.

Summarizes the wealth of Agnon criticism which appeared from the 1970s through the late 1980s.

———. “Topographies of Reading: Agnon through Benjamin.” Prooftexts 21, no. 1 (winter 2001): 71-89.

Reader-response criticism emphasizing the “topographies” each reader brings to the text, with emphasis on several Agnon novels.

Hoshen, Dalia. “Midrash and the Writing of Agnon.” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 5, no. 3 (October 2002): 332-66.

Detailed treatment of Judaism in the works of Agnon, the tension between skepticism and faith, the link with midrashic literature, and Agnon's style of writing.

Katsman, Roman. The Time of Cruel Miracles: Mythopoesis in Dostoesvky and Agnon. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: P. Lang, 2002, 236 p.

Study of the use of myth in Dostoevsky and Agnon.

Katz, Stephen. The Centrifugal Novel: S. Y. Agnon's Poetics of Composition. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 219 p.

Study of the multi-level texts used in the composition of three Agnon works.

Mazor, Yair. The Triple Cord, Agnon, Hamsun Strindberg: Where Scandinavian and Hebrew Literature Meet, Tel Aviv, Israel: Papyrus, 1987, 250 p.

Study of supposed Scandinavian influences on Agnon's writing.

Parfitt, Tudor. “Agnon and Germany.” In The Great Transition: The Recovery of the Lost Centers of Modern Hebrew Literature, edited by Glenda Abramson and Parfitt, p. 176. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman, 1985.

An examination of Agnon's relationship to German culture, with particular attention to his novel Ad Heinah.

Shaked, Gershon. Shmuel Yosef Agnon: A Revolutionary Traditionalist, translated by Jeffrey M. Green. New York: New York University Press, 1989, 293 p.

Examines Agnon as a “modern” writer whose unique literary forms expressed the conflict between tradition and the anarchy created by contemporary life. Includes a bibliography of Hebrew works, translated works, and criticism in Hebrew, English, and German.

Weiss, Hillel. “Analytic Index for the Complete Works of Agnon: A Scholarly Tool in Preparation.” Literary and Linguistic Computing: Journal of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing 4, no. 3 (1989): 169-173.

Discussion of the application of the Poetic Linguistic and Analytic Index (PLAI) to the works of Agnon.

Weizman, Elda. “Building True Understanding via Apparent Miscommunication: A Case Study.” Journal of Pragmatics 31, no. 6 (June 1999): 837-46.

Study of the treatment of misunderstanding in A Simple Story.

Werses, Samuel. Relations between Jews and Poles in S. Y. Agnon's Work. Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1994, 128 p.

Study of the ways Agnon treats Polish Jews in his fiction.

Additional information on Agnon’s life and career is published in the following sources by the Gale Group: Contemporary Authors, Vols. 17-18; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 60, 102; Contemporary Authors—Obituary, Vols. 25-28R; Contemporary Authors Permanent Series, Vol. 2; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 4, 8, 14; Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Ed. 3; Literature Resource Center; Major 20th-Century Writers, Eds. 1, 2; Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Ed. 2; Reference Guide to World Literature, Eds. 2, 3; and Short Story Criticism, Vol. 30.