The Tale of Darkness in Amos Oz’s Literary Work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In this article, I present an analysis of Amos Oz’s writings, from his early collection of stories, Where the Jackals Howl (1965) to his autofictional novel A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002). Throughout the tumultuous first five decades of Israel’s Independence, Oz’s oeuvre consistently expressed an implicit tale of darkness. Darkness is the key figure of the national abyss in Oz’s literature. As a political category, Oz’s interpretation of darkness bears the traces of postcolonial literature, where darkness is a root metaphor; as a poetic principle, darkness holds the unsaid within the literary text. Marking the unsaid, darkness turns to be a recall for depth hermeneutics, as it acknowledges “the hidden” as a core category of meaning in national literatures.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)75-86
Number of pages12
JournalIsrael Studies Review
Volume39
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Association for Israel Studies

Keywords

  • Amos Oz
  • Hebrew literature
  • National Literature
  • darkness

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Tale of Darkness in Amos Oz’s Literary Work'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this