The Soul Of Cynthia Ozick's Art

Cynthia Ozick is one of the outstanding American Jewish writers. Over the past fifty decades, Ozick has secured her reputation in contemporary literary circles on several fronts—as New York intellectual, literary critic, political commentator, poet, and fiction writer. She writes on a range of subjects, but her most characteristic and compelling themes are Jewish identity, Jewish history, and Jewish art. And she has a perfect command of conflicted literary strategies to express her Jewish themes. So in my writing, I would like to dig out her Jewish themes by analyzing some of her favorite literary strategies of her fiction.In chapter one, I give a brief introduction about Ozick's status in American Jewish literature, the influence of her family and Henry James on her writing, as well as her Jewish themes and literary strategies which I would discuss in the ensuing chapters.In chapter two, I discuss one of her conflicted literary strategies used in two of her stories Suitcase and Envy: or, Yiddish in America: the confrontation between Jews who invoke history and Gentiles who prefer to forget it. For Ozick, historical awareness is an indispensable component of Jewish identity in fictions that relentlessly draw the line between the authentic and the false.In her fictions, Cynthia Ozick lifted up again and again the vexed and intricate tangle of Jewish attitudes toward art. For Ozick, the art is idolatrous, and works of art can be redeemed, turned toward the service of God, only when they reveal "moral purpose." So in chapter three, I would discuss her favorite Jewish themes—Jewish identity crisis—by analyzing how she equates idolatry and art in her stories The Pagan Rabbi and Usurpation.In chapter four, I discuss Ozick's another conflicted literary strategy: the fusion of reality and fantasy in her fiction Levitation: Five Fictions. Drawing upon the traditions and lore of Judaism, Ozick conjures her Jewish magic to illuminate the moral dimension of both fiction and contemporary reality.The last chapter is the conclusion of my writing. In this section, first I conclude Ozick's difference from other American Jewish writers, and the summaries of her literary strategies I discussed in my writing. Then I list the status quo of overseas studies of Ozick's art. Finally, I give the significance of my research.