Yiddish writers romanticized the shtetl world that Mendele had attacked
Evidence
- In his survey of modern Yiddish literature, Irving Howe notes a similar response among Yiddish-language writers, who according to Howe, felt “an impulse … to romanticize the very world that Mendele had so bitterly attacked.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 1052
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the wider phenomenon of nostalgic romanticization of a harsh past world — parallels the ‘invented tradition’ and nostalgia literature treatments in Hobsbawm and elsewhere.