{"product_id":"deborah-and-her-sisters-how-one-nineteenth-century-melodrama-and-a-host-of-celebrated-actresses-put-judaism-on-the-world-stage-hardback-9780812249583","title":"Deborah and Her Sisters; How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage (Hardback) 9780812249583","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eDeborah and Her Sisters\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eHow One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eJonathan M. Hess (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780812249583\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 24 November 2017\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e272 pages, 61 illus.\u003cbr\u003e23.5 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm, 0.61 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eDeborah and her Sisters\u003c\/i\u003e is the result of magnificent archival research. It is also clearly a labor of love: the author takes pleasure in the story he tells of a single play's journey, making the book a delight to read . . . Hess's volume is a must-read for those who work in nineteenth-century theater, performance, or especially Jewish Studies, but it also has much to offer a general Victorianist as a case study for the importance of theater in shaping ideas, effecting change, and challenging our settled contemporary notions of aesthetic merit by confronting what many Victorians themselves valued.\" (\u003ci\u003eVictorian Studies\u003c\/i\u003e) \"An exuberant account of the transnational performance history of a forgotten blockbuster, this book sets a new standard for Jewish cultural studies. By carefully reconstructing the contexts in which Jewish and non-Jewish theater audiences came together to cry over a melodramatic tale of Jewish suffering, Jonathan M. Hess reveals the importance of philosemitism to the nineteenth-century liberal imagination.\" (Maurice Samuels, Yale University) \"\u003ci\u003eDeborah and Her Sisters\u003c\/i\u003e presents a new and constructively critical approach to the study of philosemitism and to the study of representations of Jews and Jewishness in general. This is cultural studies at its best-in excavating and interpreting a largely forgotten and demonstrably significant theatrical blockbuster, Jonathan M. Hess forces us to rethink key methodological questions and to reevaluate our understanding of an era.\" (Martha B. Helfer, Rutgers University)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eBefore \u003ci\u003eFiddler on the Roof\u003c\/i\u003e, before \u003ci\u003eThe Jazz Singer\u003c\/i\u003e, there was \u003ci\u003eDeborah\u003c\/i\u003e, a tear-jerking melodrama about a Jewish woman forsaken by her non-Jewish lover. Within a few years of its 1849 debut in Hamburg, the play was seen on stages across Germany and Austria, as well as throughout Europe, the British Empire, and North America. The German-Jewish elite complained that the playwright, Jewish writer S. H. Mosenthal, had written a drama bearing little authentic Jewish content, while literary critics protested that the play lacked the formal coherence of great tragedy. Yet despite its lackluster critical reception, \u003ci\u003eDeborah\u003c\/i\u003e became a blockbuster, giving millions of theatergoers the pleasures of sympathizing with an exotic Jewish woman. It spawned adaptations with titles from \u003ci\u003eLeah, the Forsaken\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eNaomi, the Deserted\u003c\/i\u003e, burlesques, poems, operas in Italian and Czech, musical selections for voice and piano, a British novel fraudulently marketed in the United States as the original basis for the play, three American silent films, and thousands of souvenir photographs of leading actresses from Adelaide Ristori to Sarah Bernhardt in character as Mosenthal's forsaken Jewess.\u003cbr\u003e For a sixty-year period, \u003ci\u003eDeborah\u003c\/i\u003e and its many offshoots provided audiences with the ultimate feel-good experience of tearful sympathy and liberal universalism. With \u003ci\u003eDeborah and Her Sisters\u003c\/i\u003e, Jonathan M. Hess offers the first comprehensive history of this transnational phenomenon, focusing on its unique ability to bring Jews and non-Jews together during a period of increasing antisemitism. Paying careful attention to local performances and the dynamics of transnational exchange, Hess asks that we take seriously the feelings this commercially successful drama provoked as it drove its diverse audiences to tears. Following a vast paper trail in theater archives and in the press, \u003ci\u003eDeborah and Her Sisters\u003c\/i\u003e reconstructs the allure that Jewishness held in nineteenth-century popular culture and explores how the \u003ci\u003eDeborah\u003c\/i\u003e sensation generated a liberal culture of compassion with Jewish suffering that extended beyond the theater walls.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52559201468696,"sku":"9780812249583","price":35.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/deborah-and-her-sisters-how-one-nineteenth-century-melodrama-and-a-host-of-celebrated-actresses-put-judaism-on-the-world-stage-hardback-9780812249583","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}