 | Scholes' third category, "involves a critique of the themes developed in a given fictional text, or a critique of the codes themselves, out of which a given text has been constructed."
Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 22, 23.
|
| 22. See Bloom's discussions of Jacob's wrestling with the angel in
The Breaking of the Vessels
(4960) and in the "Introduction" to
Musical Variations on Jewish Thought
(1213). For Bloom, the struggle for the Blessing "in every sense primarily means
more life
" (
Musical Variations
27), which would come from the triumphant seizing of unbounded time from God, or more precisely from the angel, whom Bloom understands to be the Angel of Death. This sheds further light on the tragicomic defeat found throughout Ozick's work: even compared to the self-lacerating struggles in Kafka, it implies an acceptance of the contemporary Jew's diminished status within normative belief.
|
| 23. Scholes,
Textual Power,
22.
|
| 24. Ozick,
Art and Ardor,
208.
|
| 25. Yerushalmi,
Zakhor,
11.
|
| 26. Ibid., 1415.
|
| 27. Ibid., 21, 18.
|
| 28. For discussions of the significance of this movement, see Yerushalmi,
Zakhor,
8390 and Biale,
Gershom Scholem,
432.
|
| 29. Yerushalmi,
Zakhor,
93.
|
| 30. Bloom, "Introduction,"
Musical Variations,
11.
|
| 31. Cynthia Ozick,
The Cannibal Galaxy
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983; rpt. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984), 5.
|
| 32. Ibid., 27.
|
|