ABSTRACT
The multicultural experience of the Jewish people casts a new light on determining the boundaries of a national literature. Prior to the Enlightenment there existed a division of labor between Hebrew-Aramaic, a language reserved for canonical works of Jewish law and lore, and the various vernacular languages. The absorption of Jews into the Christian body politic suggested a third and even more radical solution: using the coterritorial language to address a Jewish and non-Jewish audience alike. The absorption of Jews into the Christian body politic suggested a third and even more radical solution: using the coterritorial language to address a Jewish and non-Jewish audience alike. The growing fragmentation of modern Jewish culture is most evident in the autobiographical genre. With Hitler's rise to power, Jewish novelists turned to the family saga, a genre that threw the question of continuity into the sharpest possible focus. Jewish readers who hunger for a broad historical canvas must turn to Tolstoy.
