Approaches to Teaching the Works of Primo Levi

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Primo Levi

Author: Nicholas Patruno

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2014-11-01

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1603291792

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Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and renowned memoirist, is one of the most widely read writers of post-World War II Italy. His works are characterized by the lean, dispassionate eloquence with which he approaches his experience of incarceration in Auschwitz. His memoirs--as well as his poetry and fiction and his many interviews--are often taught in several fields, including Jewish studies and Holocaust studies, comparative literature, and Italian language and literature, and can enrich the study of history, psychology, and philosophy. The first part of this volume provides instructors with an overview of the available editions, anthologies, and translations of Levi's work and identifies other useful classroom aids, such as films, music, and online resources. In the second part, contributors describe different approaches to teaching Levi's work. Some, in presenting Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, and The Drowned and the Saved, look at the place of style in Holocaust testimony and the reliability of memory in autobiography. Others focus on questions of translation, complicated by the untranslatable in the language and experiences of the concentration camps, or on how Levi incorporates his background as a chemist into his writing, most clearly in The Periodic Table.


Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night

Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night

Author: Alan Rosen

Publisher: Approaches to Teaching World L

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13:

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Elie Wiesel is an internationally known author, human rights advocate, and lecturer. Night, his first book (1956 in Yiddish, 1958 in French, 1960 in English; a new English translation appeared in 2006), has become a classic memoir of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. The seventeen essays of this volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature examine the historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Wiesel's book as well as strategies for teaching it in the classroom. Part 1, "Materials," provides resources on the Jewish ghettos and concentration camps of World War II, on the Jewish faith and religious practices, on the genre of victims' diaries, on the critical reception of Night, on Wiesel's other work, and on available audiovisual materials. Part 2, "Approaches," addresses many subjects—among them, Wiesel's narrative techniques, the representation of Auschwitz, the use of different languages, the comparison of Wiesel with Primo Levi, the problems of memory and bearing witness, the Christian response to the Holocaust, and the challenge of teaching a grim and painful text to students.


Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein

Author: Logan Esdale

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2018-08-01

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1603293450

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A trailblazing modernist, Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Radcliffe with William James and went on to train as a medical doctor before coming out as a lesbian and moving to Paris, where she collected contemporary art and wrote poetry, novels, and libretti. Known as a writer's writer, she has influenced every generation of American writers since her death in 1946 and remains avant-garde. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," provides information and resources that will help teachers and students begin and pursue their study of Stein. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," introduce major topics to be covered in the classroom--race, gender, feminism, sexuality, narrative form, identity, and Stein's experimentation with genre--in a wide range of contexts, including literary analysis, art history, first-year composition, and cultural studies.


The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table

Author: Primo Levi

Publisher: Everyman's Library

Published: 1996-10-01

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0679444637

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The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. As such, it provides crucial links and backgrounds, both personal and intellectual, in the tremendous project of remembrance that is Levi’s gift to posterity. But far from being a prologue to his experience of the Holocaust, Levi’s masterpiece represents his most impassioned response to the events that engulfed him. The Periodic Table celebrates the pleasures of love and friendship and the search for meaning, and stands as a monument to those things in us that are capable of resisting and enduring in the face of tyranny.


The Complete Works of Primo Levi

The Complete Works of Primo Levi

Author: Primo Levi

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2015-09-28

Total Pages: 2388

ISBN-13: 1631492063

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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post and Library Journal A Holiday Gift Guide Selection in the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection The Complete Works of Primo Levi, which includes seminal works like If This Is a Man and The Periodic Table, finally gathers all fourteen of Levi’s books—memoirs, essays, poetry, commentary, and fiction—into three slipcased volumes. Primo Levi, the Italian-born chemist once described by Philip Roth as that “quicksilver little woodland creature enlivened by the forest’s most astute intelligence,” has largely been considered a heroic figure in the annals of twentieth-century literature for If This Is a Man, his haunting account of Auschwitz. Yet Levi’s body of work extends considerably beyond his experience as a survivor. Now, the transformation of Levi from Holocaust memoirist to one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers culminates in this publication of The Complete Works of Primo Levi. This magisterial collection finally gathers all of Levi’s fourteen books—memoirs, essays, poetry, and fiction—into three slip-cased volumes. Thirteen of the books feature new translations, and the other is newly revised by the original translator. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison introduces Levi’s writing as a “triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction.” The appearance of this historic publication will occasion a major reappraisal of “one of the most valuable writers of our time” (Alfred Kazin). The Complete Works of Primo Levi features all new translations of: The Periodic Table, The Drowned and the Saved, The Truce, Natural Histories, Flaw of Form, The Wrench, Lilith, Other People’s Trades, and If Not Now, When?—as well as all of Levi’s poems, essays, and other nonfiction work, some of which have never appeared before in English.


Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy

Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy

Author: Christopher Kleinhenz

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2020-02-01

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1603294287

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Dante's Divine Comedy can compel and shock readers: it combines intense emotion and psychological insight with medieval theology and philosophy. This volume will help instructors lead their students through the many dimensions--historical, literary, religious, and ethical--that make the work so rewarding and enduringly relevant yet so difficult. Part 1, "Materials," gives instructors an overview of the important scholarship on the Divine Comedy. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," describe ways to teach the work in the light of its contemporary culture and ours. Various teaching situations (a first-year seminar, a creative writing class, high school, a prison) are considered, and the many available translations are discussed.


A Scrap of Time and Other Stories

A Scrap of Time and Other Stories

Author: Ida Fink

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780810112599

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Named a New York Times Notable Book Winner of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize Winner of the Anne Frank Prize These shattering stories describe the lives of ordinary people as they are compelled to do the unimaginable: a couple who must decide what to do with their five-year-old daughter as the Gestapo come to march them out of town; a wife whose safety depends on her acquiescence in her husband's love affair; a girl who must pay a grim price for an Aryan identity card.


Survival In Auschwitz

Survival In Auschwitz

Author: Primo Levi

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0684826801

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A work by the Italian-Jewish writer, Primo Levi. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.


Primo Levi and the Identity of a Survivor

Primo Levi and the Identity of a Survivor

Author: Nancy Harrowitz

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1487501021

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Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor who used a combination of testimony, essays, and creative writing to explore crucial themes related to the Shoah. His voice is among the most important to emerge from this dark chapter in human history. In Primo Levi and the Identity of a Survivor, Nancy Harrowitz examines the complex role that Levi's Jewish identity played in his choices of how to portray his survival, as well as in his exposition of topics such as bystander complicity. Her analysis uncovers a survivor's shame that deeply influenced the personas he created to recount his experiences. Exploring a range of Levi's works, including Survival at Auschwitz and lesser-known works of fiction and poetry, she illustrates key issues within his development as a writer. At the heart of Levi's discourse, Harrowitz argues, lies a complex interplay of narrative modes that reveals his brilliance as a theorist of testimony.


The Drowned and the Saved

The Drowned and the Saved

Author: Primo Levi

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-06-20

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1501167634

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In his final book before his death, Primo Levi returns once more to his time at Auschwitz in a moving meditation on memory, resiliency, and the struggle to comprehend unimaginable tragedy. Drawing on history, philosophy, and his own personal experiences, Levi asks if we have already begun to forget about the Holocaust. His last book before his death, Levi returns to the subject that would define his reputation as a writer and a witness. Levi breaks his book into eight essays, ranging from topics like the unreliability of memory to how violence twists both the victim and the victimizer. He shares how difficult it is for him to tell his experiences with his children and friends. He also debunks the myth that most of the Germans were in the dark about the Final Solution or that Jews never attempted to escape the camps. As the Holocaust recedes into the past and fewer and fewer survivors are left to tell their stories, The Drowned and the Saved is a vital first-person testament. Along with Elie Wiesel and Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi is remembered as one of the most powerful and perceptive writers on the Holocaust and the Jewish experience during World War II. This is an essential book both for students and literary readers. Reading Primo Levi is a lesson in the resiliency of the human spirit.