Edith Wharton in Tel Aviv: The Curious Case of Undine Spragg

Evron, Nir

doi:10.5325/editwharrevi.33.1.0073

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Research Article| May 15 2017

Edith Wharton in Tel Aviv: The Curious Case of Undine Spragg

Nir Evron

Tel Aviv University

nir evron is a lecturer at the Department for English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University. He teaches and publishes on the twentieth-century novel, and is currently working on a book project titled The Novel and the Transience of Cultural Worlds.

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Edith Wharton Review (2017) 33 (1): 73–78.

https://doi.org/10.5325/editwharrevi.33.1.0073

Abstract

Coming out of my experiences teaching Wharton in Tel Aviv, this article puzzles over Undine Spragg's strong and ambivalent appeal to Israeli English students, and suggests possible explanations for it. Undine, I claim, speaks to the pragmatic, bottom-line mentality that broadly characterizes Israeli culture, while also exposing the (often unacknowledged) conservative commitments underlying the rather thin liberalism of the students, Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli alike.

Edith Wharton, teaching, The Custom of the Country, Summer, conservatism, liberalism, Lionel Trilling

2017

The Pennsylvania State University

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Edith Wharton in Tel Aviv: The Curious Case of Undine Spragg

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Edith Wharton in Tel Aviv: The Curious Case of Undine Spragg