Find Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, And Protest In The Afterlife Of A Biblical Book Crafted By Tod Linafelt Available As Publication

contemporary interpretations of the biblical book of Lamentations focus on the figure of the "suffering man" as a role model for submission in the face of God's punishment for sin.
Yet such a model offers small consolation to survivors of the Holocaust or other mass atrocities and also ignores chaptersandof Lamentations, in which the personification of Zion laments her sufferings and demands a response on behalf of her dying children.


In Surviving Lamentations, Tod Linafelt offers an alternative reading of Lamentations in light of the "literature of survival" works written by survivors of catastrophe as well as literary and philosophical reflections on "the

survival of literature.
" He refocuses attention on the figure of Zion as a manifestation of a basic need to give voice to suffering, and traces the afterlife of Lamentations in Jewish literature, in which text after text attempts to provide the response to Zion's lament that is lacking in Lamentations itself.


Seen through Linafelt's eyes, Lamentations emerges as uncannily relevant to contemporary discourse on survival, Tod Linafelt is professor of biblical literature in the Theology Department at Georgetown University, .