Ben-Dov published books, articles, and essays on
Shmuel Yosef Agnon,
Abraham B. Yehoshua Amos Oz,
S. Yizhar,
Yehuda Amichai,
Yehoshua Kenaz, Yehudit Handel,
Haim Be'er,
Sami Michael,
Zeruya Shalev, Yehudit Rotem,
Assaf Inbari and
Dahlia Ravikovitch. Her research combines structuralist, feminist, psychoanalytical, and biographical elements in the work of these authors, along with intra-textual and inter-textual scrutiny. ''Agnon's Art of Indirection: Uncovering Latent Content in the Fiction of S.Y Agnon'', (
Brill Publishers, 1993), revealed the possibility of analyzing Agnon's work (characterized by "the art of indirection", a term coined by Ben-Dov) even when translated into English. Ben-Dov has introduced Agnon to scholars of literature outside Israel and proved that it is possible to analyze word by word, through close reading, the unique nature of Agnon's work. Although the nuanced relations of the 'latent' and the 'uncovered' layers are attached through the essence of the Hebrew language, Ben-Dov illustrates that the greatness of a writer must withstand translation. The book surveys the methods, themes, and materials in Agnon's art, and deals extensively with dreams and their interpretation. It presents intersections of meaning in Agnon's writings, in which various layers are brought to light:
psychoanalytical and
cultural; a discussion is conducted on Biblical infrastructures, which the English reader may find in the translations of the works, in contrast to the Talmudic infrastructures.
Unhappy/unapproved Loves: Erotic Frustration, Art and Death in the Work of Agnon (
Ahavot Lo Me-Usharot, 1997) enlarges the discussion of the Agnonian corpus and contains psychoanalytical discussions in the spirit of
Freud and
Jung; along with these are inter-textual discussions, both literary – as to the affinities between
Agnon and
Mann,
Kafka,
Voltaire, and
Flaubert – and artistic-anthropological, on the affinity of the writings to the works of
Rembrandt and
Arnold Böcklin. The combination of methods constructs an autonomous cultural interpretation, which deciphers the Agnonian character, as well as the society out of which it arises. Common to the corpus under consideration is the theme of unfulfilled love and frustration that this invites. In this book Ben-Dov holds a dialogue with Agnon scholars and critics, and offers an original interpretation of his writing.
And It Is Your Praise: Studies in the Writings of S. Y. Agnon, A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz (
Ve-Hi Tehilatekha, 2006) concerns particular, intra-textual research, mapping repetitive primary themes and literary formats in Agnon,
Yehoshua, and
Oz. It also conducts inter-textual research, singling out the tangential points of Yehoshua (to whom is devoted Ben-Dov's Hebrew book
In the Opposite Direction, 1995, about the novel Mr. Mani) and Oz on the one hand, and Agnon and the other: Agnon is a 'father figure' and the creator of literary models on which Oz and Yehoshua draw. In addition, the book indicates the unique elements in the works of Oz and Yehoshua after they lay down a mature fictional mode. The writings that Ben-Dov chose to discuss are timeless.*
Written Lives: On Israeli Literary Autobiographies (Hayyim Ktuvim, 2011) is a scholarly response to the wave of
autobiographic and
biographic prose that has flooded Hebrew literature (and literature generally) since the early 1990s. Ben-Dov assigns Preliminaris by
S. Yizhar, published in 1992, as the starting point of this salient trend in Israeli literature. In its wake came self-declared autobiographic novels: The Pure Element of Time (Havalim) by
Haim Be'er (1998),
A Tale of Love and Darkness (Sippur al ahava vehoshekh) by
Amos Oz (2002), My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner (Ha-davar haya kakha) by
Meir Shalev (2009), and Spanish Charity (Hessed sefaradi) by
A.B. Yehoshua (2011). In Ben-Dov's discussion of Preliminaris and these others, she substantiates the two faces of this genre: a factual or semi-factual account tied in with a well designed written work. Ben-Dov likewise scrutinizes that dialectics of the later self-declared autobiographic work with earlier writings by these authors. Ben-Dov studies autobiographic writings that preceded the torrent of late 20th and early 21st century: Agnon's story "The Mark" (Hasiman), the full version of which was published in 1962, the two semi-autobiographic novels by Sami Michael Refuge (Hasut) and A Handful of Fog (Hofen shel arafel), published in the late 1970s, and the complex of Dahlia Ravikovitch's prose and poetry, from which the experience of orphanhood erupts.
Written Lives also contains scholarly discussions of writings that are not purely literary, such as the
Baghdad Yesterday: The Making of an Arab Jew (Bebagdad etmol), which is the memoirs of the literature scholar
Sasson Somekh (2004);
Yosef Haim Brenner: A Biography (Yosef Hayyim Brenner: Sippur hayyim) by the
historian Anita Shapira (2008); and
Home (Habayta), a novel of the kibbutz by
Assaf Inbari (2009).
Written Lives has a three-part
Introduction and an
Epilogue.*
War Lives: On the Army, Revenge, Grief and the Consciousness of War in Israeli fiction (2016) was published by
Schocken. The book deals with the consciousness of war, the experiences of the army, the urge to take revenge, the place of the individual within a group, the occupier-occupier relationship and dealing with loss and bereavement as reflected in selected works in Israeli fiction, from the First World War to the eve of the Second Lebanon War. Each chapter focuses on a different issue in the existence of Jewish and Israeli living in the shadow of wars.
Where the Heart is Drawn (
Schocken, 2022) is divided into nine chapters, each contains one or several sections that deal with works of a writer or literary critic:
Shmuel Yosef Agnon,
Yehuda Amichai,
A.B. Yehoshua,
Zeruya Shalev,
Amos Oz,
Haim Be'er,
Dan Miron, Shmuel Avneri, Eliyahu Maidanik and
Robert Alter.
War Lives: Revenge, Grief, and Conflict in Israeli Fiction, published by
Syracuse University Press, (2024), is available on Amazon - https://a.co/d/hyNNO3D. Close readings of ten Israeli novels, exploring how issues of loss and grief, vengeance, and defeat are reflected in fiction. == Published books==