A01=Michael Fishbane
Author_Michael Fishbane
Category=DSA
Category=QR
Category=QRAB
Category=QRJ
Category=QRVG
cultural pedagogy
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Hasidic homily
Jewish literature
Jewish theology
lament
literary phenomenology
primary emotions
primary experience
religious hermeneutics
testimony
Product details
- ISBN 9780226842110
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 20 Aug 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A powerful exploration of how literature expresses and transforms our earliest preverbal experiences.
Primacies begins with the assertion that our earliest preverbal experiences are accompanied by a primary language—a universal expression of tears, cries, and laughter offered long before we learn our distinctive, ordinary languages. For Michael Fishbane, these “primacies” release the raw feelings of our existential condition and catalyze our most powerful literary expressions of sorrow, joy, and fulfillment.
In this book, Fishbane explores how ancient, medieval, and modern literature and poetry express and transform these primal sensations. Building on his theological project begun in Sacred Attunement and Fragile Finitude, Fishbane offers here a radically new lived hermeneutics that seeks to do nothing less than redefine the relationship between experience and language.
Primacies begins with the assertion that our earliest preverbal experiences are accompanied by a primary language—a universal expression of tears, cries, and laughter offered long before we learn our distinctive, ordinary languages. For Michael Fishbane, these “primacies” release the raw feelings of our existential condition and catalyze our most powerful literary expressions of sorrow, joy, and fulfillment.
In this book, Fishbane explores how ancient, medieval, and modern literature and poetry express and transform these primal sensations. Building on his theological project begun in Sacred Attunement and Fragile Finitude, Fishbane offers here a radically new lived hermeneutics that seeks to do nothing less than redefine the relationship between experience and language.
Michael Fishbane is the Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology and Fragile Finitude: A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
