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How the wise men got to Chelm : the life and times of a Yiddish folk tradition / Ruth von Bernuth.

by Bernuth, Ruth von, author.

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New York : New York University Press, c2016.

Folk literature, Yiddish -- Poland -- Chełm (Lublin) -- History and criticism.

9781479828449 (cloth : alk. paper) :

1479828440 (cloth : alk. paper) :

xiii, 317 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

How the wise men got to Gotham: the fools of Chelm take Manhattan -- How foolish is Jewish culture? Fools, Jews, and the carnivalesque culture of early modernity -- Through the land of foolish culture: from Laleburg to Schildburg Gentile fools speaking Yiddish: the Schildbürgerbuch for Jewish readers -- The Enlightenment goes East: how Democritus of Abdera got to Galicia -- The geography of folly: the folklorists and the invention of Chelm -- Chelm tales after World War One in German and Yiddish: "Our Schilda" and "Our Chelm Correspondent" -- The once and future Chelm.

"How the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first in-depth study of Chelm literature and its relationship to its literary precursors. By placing literary Chelm and its 'foolish' antecedents in a broader historical context, it shows how they have functioned for over three hundred years as models of society, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. These imaginary foolish towns have enabled writers both to entertain and highlight a variety of societal problems, a function that literary Chelm continues to fulfill in Jewish literature to this day"--From publisher description.

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