Amy Levy and Identity Criticism: A Review of Recent Work

Abstract

Amy Levy was a fin-de-siècle poet, novelist, and essayist. While critically acclaimed within her lifetime, she was all but forgotten by literary scholars until the 1980s, when her work was reintroduced to scholars as part of a larger project to integrate the writings of women and other minority groups into the canon. Levy falls into a number of these minority categories: she was not only female but also Jewish, and expressed non-normative understandings of sexual desire. Virtually all critical work on Levy since her reappearance in the field has been deeply rooted in her experiences as an her concepts of minority identity. In this review article, I examine the ways in which recent critical works on Levy that refine and expand preceding identity criticism. I argue that articles and book chapters by Iveta Jusová, Cynthia Scheinberg, and Linda Hunt Beckman are setting the new standard for identity criticism by examining the complex intersections of identity categories, and by linking identity to new fields of inquiry.Webs of strange patterns we weave (each owns) From color and sound; and like unto these, Soul has its tones and its semitones, Mind has its major and minor keys.-Amy Levy,'In a Minor Key'