Yair Mazor, Hebrew Studies Program, Department of Foreign languages and Linguistics

This presentation aims to introduce my part in a forthcoming co-taught MALLT seminar (Spring of ’09/’10). The seminar will be about literary theories and their application to both the Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament) and the Christian Bible (The New Testament). The part on the New Testament will be taught by Professor Demetrius Williams.

This colloquium will focus on applying literary theories to selected texts from the book of Genesis. I will display some of the aesthetic functions and analytical tools of literary interpretation which stem from the dynamic, sequential nature of literary text. Upon introducing the literary theories, I will succinctly relate them to the dynamics of the literary text since it is the very bedrock of the literary theories in particular and of any text in general. The dynamics of the literary text will be first demonstrated on three “run-on lines” and a Hebrew children’s poem. Subsequently, the literary theories will be applied to a sample of texts from the Hebrew Bible.