Surviving Lamentations Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book
- List Price: $45.00
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr
- Publish date: 05/01/2000
In Surviving Lamentations, Tod Linafelt offers an alternative reading of Lamentations in light of the "literature of survival" (works written by survivors of catastrophe) as well as literary and philosophical reflections on "the survival of literature". He refocuses attention on the figure of Zion as a manifestation of a basic need to give voice to suffering, and traces the afterlife of Lamentations in Jewish literature, in which text after text attempts to provide the response to Zion's lament that is lacking in Lamentations itself.
Seen through Linafelt's eyes, Lamentations emerges as uncannily relevant to contemporary discourse on survival.