Where Agnon and Jung Meet

Book excerpt: S. Y. Agnon is Israel’s most celebrated author and the only Israeli writer to have received the Noble Prize for Literature, which he received in 1966. His novels and short stories deal with the traditional Jewish way of life and its interaction with twentieth century European and Western living. This book uses Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of archetypes as a method of analysis of the Jewish archetypes found in Agnon’s novel, The Bridal Canopy. It serves as a practical guide to the application of psychological theory to a modern novel. As such, it heightens the literary sensitivity of the reader, and serves as a tool for a psychological perspective on the depths of the universal human soul.