A Lonely Soul, Existential Predicament

Isaac Bashevis Singer, one of the most sophisticated contemporary Jewish writers, creates an insightful and deep body of work that occupies a significant position in literary history. His works are always permeated with paradoxes, which has become one of his most remarkable characteristics.From the perspective of cultural poetics, the thesis aims to make a comprehensive, thorough and systematic study of the paradox in Singer's works and further delve into the reasons why he persists in employing paradox.Paradox, in his works, is revealed in several aspects: the paradoxical protagonists, the subject matter of passion and ambivalence in his attitude towards religion and women. The Bashevian protagonists, the archetypal modern Jews in exile, oscillating between different lifestyles and heterogeneous cultures, are invariably trapped in a maze of contradictions. Living in the tensions of belief and skepticism, tradition and modernism, Judaism and Christianity, persistence of Jewishness and assimilation, they are forced to choose between two worlds and propelled towards one of the polar opposites. Totally marginalized, they suffer from their identity crises and drop into eternal spiritual puzzlement, anxiety and boredom. Along with his frequently utilized subject matter of passion, the author delineates their fierce inner conflicts, multiple personalities and spiritual puzzlement. Moreover, ambivalence in Singer's attitude towards religion and women constitutes an indispensable part of the paradox in his works. Singer's paradoxical complex, which formed in his life and writing, interacts with paradoxes in Jewish culture and history, and thereby renders him sensitive to paradox.Chapter One sets out to locate Singer's works into the Jewish social, religious, historical and cultural contexts to analyze the paradox in his works. Singer's novels The Magician of Lublin, The Family Moskat, Enemies, A Love Story and Shosha are chosen as case studies along with some other novels, memoirs and short stories. Turning to cultural poetics, Chapter Two makes efforts to relate Singer's literary creation to the particular time and place that fashioned the author and to the Jewish historical, social, religious and cultural contexts to reveal the intertextuality between literature and culture and more significantly to probe into the reasons why Singer likes using paradox in his works. In the end, the study draws the conclusion that by utilizing paradox, Singer, who spent his life penetrating into the soul of modern man, accomplishes the representation of perpetual perplexing state of human existence, i.e. affluent alienation and endless spiritual problems. Meanwhile, by juxtaposing contrary things or oppositional qualities, Singer employs paradox to produce the effects of tension and ambiguity in his works.