Humor And Jewish Identity Construction In Cynthia Ozick's Short Fiction

Cynthia Ozick(1928-)is one of the distinguished contemporary American writers who with sharp wit and insightful humor writes about Judaic culture and history and examines Jewish American's life and identity.This thesis discusses the art of humor incorporated in Jewish identity construction in Cynthia Ozick's short fiction.By delving into the humorous narration of different types of Jews in their cultural,gender and ethnic interactions,this thesis is to explore the stylistic features of Ozick's comic art as well as to evaluate the thematic and the aesthetic function of humor in Ozick's construction of Jewish intellectual,gender and ethnic identity.The main body of this thesis consists of three parts.The first part examines the technique and the function of humor in the construction of Jewish intellectual identity.Through the humorous narration of different Jewish intellectuals including the poet,the writer and the rabbi in their various cultural interactions,Ozick uses humor not only to question the moral weakness and character flaws such as hypocrisy,dissoluteness of these intellectuals but also reveal the cultural dilemmas including the decline of Yiddish and the constraint of Judaism upon Jewish Americans in the new world.The second part explores the humorous construction of gender identity.Penetrating Ozick's comic characterization of different gender roles in Jewish cultural context,Ozick ponders the relation between gender and culture.Her sarcastic humor criticizes the falsity of masculinity,the sexist stereotypes against femininity,and contains her moral lessons on the preservation of Jewish tradition.The third part examines the function of humor in ethnic identity construction in Ozick's holocaust writing.Ozick's employment of gallows humor on the one hand represents the horror and the traumatic aftermath of holocaust;on the other hand,it plays the affirmative,the therapeutic as well as the reflective role in the construction of Jewish ethnic identity after holocaust.It not only serves to resuscitate Jew's ethnic identity and subjectivity,but also reflects the dangerous potential of ethnic intolerance and the sensitivity of historical memory.Through the humorous narration of different types of Jews in their cultural,gender,and ethnic interactions,Ozick's humor functions to criticize Jew's moral faults and character weakness,to reveal the dilemma and constraints relevant to culture,gender and ethnicity,thus embodying her effort to construct a more resilient and cohesive Jewish identity.Transcending the traditional realm of domesticity,love and marriage on which most women humorists focus,Ozick's humor narrative stands out with its cultural consciousness,historical sensitivity and national responsibility,and deserves more academic attention in the current under-researched yet male-dominated ethnic humor study.