Loving Yusuf
Conceptual Travels from Present to Past
256 pages
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6 halftones
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5-1/2 x 8-1/2
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© 2008
When Mieke Bal reread the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife as an adult, she was struck by differences between her childhood memories of a moral tale and what she read today. In Loving Yusuf¸ Bal seeks to resolve this clash between memory and text, using the same story, in which Joseph spurns the advance of his master’s wife who then falsely accuses him of rape, as her point of departure. She juxtaposes the Genesis tale to the rather different version told in the Qur’an and the depictions of it by Rembrandt and explores how Thomas Mann’s great retelling in Joseph and His Brothers reworks these versions.
Through this inquiry she develops concepts for the analysis of texts that are both strange and overly familiar—culturally remote yet constantly retold. As she puts personal memories in dialogue with scholarly exegesis, Bal asks how all of these different versions complicate her own and others’ experience of the story, and how the different truths of these texts in their respective traditions illuminate the process of canonization.
Through this inquiry she develops concepts for the analysis of texts that are both strange and overly familiar—culturally remote yet constantly retold. As she puts personal memories in dialogue with scholarly exegesis, Bal asks how all of these different versions complicate her own and others’ experience of the story, and how the different truths of these texts in their respective traditions illuminate the process of canonization.
"Bal's writing is personal and political, subjective and analytical, imaginative and scholarly. Loving Yusuf is an important contribution to the postmodern reevaluation of the Bible and Western canonicity, and a compelling and passionate invitation to rethink both the literary and the religious authoritativeness of the Bible as the foundational text of Western culture. By juxtaposing Qur'anic and biblical versions of the same story, Bal asks us to consider more than one way of looking at gender, literature, art, culture and religious imagination. Her compendious erudition, and the ease with which she traverses historical periods, cultural frames, and intellectual and academic discourses are breathtaking. On each turn, she opens up parallel textual legacies, in such a way as to shake us out of our complacency, so much so that we must once again reconsider our most recently adopted certainties."—Esther Fuchs, University of Arizona
"Bal characterizes the book as an essay. . . . As such, it achieves fascinating intercultural readings that respect the integrity of each text and artifact studied. Her distinction between literalist and fundamental reading is a significant contribution that I hope biblical studies will take up. . . . An excellent model for interpreters who would interpret biblical texts and other 'versionings' beyond the strictures of assessing influence or source appropriation. Bal’s kind of reading both reads and catches reading in action, and our present experience of interpretation is our best, fullest case for how it is done at any time."—Rebecca Raphael, Review of Biblical Literature
"A thoroughly engaging book. Full of sparks and good ideas, I enjoyed it. I do suspect my sense of these insights was actually generated by Bal's style of sprinkling key moments of the book with narratives of personal insight. . . . Precisely because these moments provide a glimpse as to how a great interpreter of all manner of texts works, the book is worth a careful read."
Contents
Acknowledgments
Fragments
1 First Memories, Second Thoughts
2 Falling in Love
3 Dreaming Away
4 Looking In: Outrageous, Preposterous
5 The Invention of Sympathy
6 Sign Language
7 Eyes Wide Shut
8 Truth Speak
9 Loose Canons: Facing Authority
10 Dad Pains
References
Index
Fragments
1 First Memories, Second Thoughts
2 Falling in Love
3 Dreaming Away
4 Looking In: Outrageous, Preposterous
5 The Invention of Sympathy
6 Sign Language
7 Eyes Wide Shut
8 Truth Speak
9 Loose Canons: Facing Authority
10 Dad Pains
References
Index
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Art: Art Criticism | European Art
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory | Germanic Languages
Religion: Christianity | Judaism | Religion and Literature
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