The Bridal Canopy a novel by Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon , was a Nobel Prize laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon . In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.Agnon was born in Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire...

, is considered to be one of the first classics of modern Hebrew literature

Hebrew literature

Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews...

. At the time of its publication in 1931, Hebrew had only recently been revived as a spoken language. Although Jewish commentators and writers continued to write in Hebrew, it was not a spoken language for nearly 2000 years. In 1966, Agnon shared the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

, the first author to do so while writing in modern Hebrew.

Agnon's novel describes the fictional wanderings of Reb Yudel through the Jewish villages of Galicia at the beginning of the 19th century, in search of a bridegroom and a dowry for his daughter. A modern critic described Agnon's fictional Reb Yudel as "naively pious." Others have characterized the fictional Reb Yudel as a Jewish archetype of Don Quixote.

Avraham Holtz has explored the roots of Agnon's central character in a character from Yiddish

Yiddish language

Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...

folklore, Reb Yudel Hasid.