Brer Rabbit and the Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem
The Double Voice in Literatures of Exile
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8909820 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rachel S Mikva (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-27 |
| Publication date | 2016-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Literature Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4132 • E-ISSN: 1528-4212 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/complitstudies.53.1.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W2303706030 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
The connection between Brer Rabbit and the story of the Jewish community after 70 CE is that both are recorded in literatures of exile. As a result, they share a significant quality—the double voice—deployed as one of many literary strategies for survival under oppression. Using passages from Brer Rabbit and Lamentations Rabba, this article focuses on riddles and trickster tales because they present an especially striking witness of the double voice as expounded within African-American literary theory. These genres appear in the folklore of most cultures, but their encoding enables a unique inversion of cultural meaning for subaltern and dispersed peoples, which gives the tales remarkable power to fashion and sustain identities, and to articulate the complexity of their experience. They absorb the imagery and language of the dominant culture, yet re-signify their meaning in the process of assimilation. Both elements of this voice—the adoption and the inversion—are essential representations of the authors or redactors. Separated by time, space, language, culture, and context, the tales of Brer Rabbit and the Palestinian rabbinic midrash speak to each other through this strategic polyphony
Aesthetics · Art · Dialogic · Folklore · Judaism · Linguistics · Literature · Midrash · Oppression · Polyphony · Silence · Sociology · Subaltern · Theology · Trickster · Witness · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society
Mother wit from the laughing barrel
Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash
The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature
Uncle Remus and the Malevolent Rabbit
Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds
Domination and the Arts of Resistance
Black Culture and Black Consciousness
Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature
Inspiriting Influences
Essential Papers On Zionism
"Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, and the "Cornfield Journalist
Colonial Desire
The Babylonian Esther Midrash
Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris
Black Father
Parables in Midrash
Africana Folklore
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |