Modern Orthodoxies：Jewish Tradition and the Art of Return

This study invigorates contemporary academic scholarship on Modernist art and literature by introducing a genuine and provocative religious vocabulary into the discourse. Mulman looks closely and carefully at key texts and figures of the Modern period, including Henry Roth, Amedeo Modigliani, James Joyce, and Art Spiegelman, and reveals a significant engagement with the rituals of Jewish observance and the structure of Talmudic interpretation. While critics often view the imaginative and formal experimentation of High Modernism as a radical departure from conventional beliefs, this book suggests that these precise aspects of Modernist art are deeply entwined with, and indebted to, the very traditions that they claim to be writing against. As such, the book offers a unique and truly multidisciplinary approach to Modernist studies, as well as a cogent analysis of the ways in which spirituality informs artistic production.