Harmonious Instability
Harmonious Instability By:Sonia Beth Gollance Published on 2017 by This dissertation analyzes representations of the controversial Jewish cultural practice of mixed-sex dancing in German and Yiddish literature from 1843 to 1942. Dance scenes are a pivotal moment for plot and character development that resist and reaffirm social hierarchies, due to the paradoxical role of dance for upwardly mobile Jews. My corpus consists largely of regional fiction that targeted urban readerships in Berlin, New York, and Vienna. I find parallels between the formulaic plot structures and the dance choreography, a narrative strategy that engrosses readers, at the same time that it entraps characters in a tragic fate. Transgressive dance scenes are an important form of social criticism, since they provide an entertaining way for authors to depict the way that boundary-crossing romance threatens the social order. In this way, dance scenes depict the way that men and women negotiate the process of accultura...