Israeli literary critic (1929–2006)
Gershon Shaked (Hebrew: גרשון שקד)
(1929–2006) was an Israeli scholar and critic of Hebrew literature.
Biography
Gerhard Mandel (later Gershon Shaked) was born in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to Mandate Palestine alone in 1939, and was later followed by his parents. He attended Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He hebraicized his surname to "Shaked"(almond). He was married to Malka, and had two daughters.[1]
Shaked's major oeuvre is his Hebrew Narrative Fiction: 1880–1980,[2] a series of five volumes that were published between 1977 and 1998. In these volumes he coined the term "The Zionist super-plot" and offered a broad perspective on the modern Hebrew literary system, its inner logic and development.
Shaked was a member of Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and published about twenty books, hundreds of articles and also autobiographical writing. He studied the works of authors such as Mendele Mocher Sforim, H.N. Bialik, S.Y. Agnon, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, as well as general currents in modern Hebrew literature – both in retrospect and in real time, as they were evolving.
Academic career
In 1950, Shaked studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a doctorate in Hebrew literature in 1964 and later chaired the Department of Hebrew Literature. In addition to his many publications in Hebrew, he also wrote more than thirty books of criticism in other languages.[3]
