Kathy Lavezzo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501703157
- eISBN:
- 9781501706158
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501703157.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter examines the unstable geography of Christian and Jew during the Anglo-Saxon period through an analysis of Bede's Latin exegetical work On the Temple (ca. 729–731) and in Cynewulf's Old ...
More
This chapter examines the unstable geography of Christian and Jew during the Anglo-Saxon period through an analysis of Bede's Latin exegetical work On the Temple (ca. 729–731) and in Cynewulf's Old English poem Elene. It takes as its starting point how Bede and Cynewulf tackle a material long associated with Jewish materialism, stone, in comparison with Christian materialism and descibes their accounts of the sepulchral Jew as well as the stony nature of Jews. It also considers how Bede and Cynewulf construct Christianity by asserting its alterity and opposition to an idea of Jewish carnality that draws on and modifies Pauline supersession. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how Bede's and Cynewulf's charged engagements with supersession and “Jewish” places contribute both to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon material culture and to the important role that ideas of the Jew played in such materialisms.Less
This chapter examines the unstable geography of Christian and Jew during the Anglo-Saxon period through an analysis of Bede's Latin exegetical work On the Temple (ca. 729–731) and in Cynewulf's Old English poem Elene. It takes as its starting point how Bede and Cynewulf tackle a material long associated with Jewish materialism, stone, in comparison with Christian materialism and descibes their accounts of the sepulchral Jew as well as the stony nature of Jews. It also considers how Bede and Cynewulf construct Christianity by asserting its alterity and opposition to an idea of Jewish carnality that draws on and modifies Pauline supersession. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how Bede's and Cynewulf's charged engagements with supersession and “Jewish” places contribute both to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon material culture and to the important role that ideas of the Jew played in such materialisms.
Kathy Lavezzo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501703157
- eISBN:
- 9781501706158
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501703157.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book has investigated the antisemitism at work in English texts, showing that such texts contain offensive fantasies about a supposed “Jewish” menace that stand in tension with counternarratives ...
More
This book has investigated the antisemitism at work in English texts, showing that such texts contain offensive fantasies about a supposed “Jewish” menace that stand in tension with counternarratives about an English Christian reliance on, desire for, and similitude to the “Jewish” materialisms Christianity claims to reject. Representations of the accommodated Jew thus reveal both an offensive politics of rejection and an ideological embrace of the Jew as a tool for accommodating the English to their messy urban materialisms. This coda discusses the implications of the book's findings for later English images of the Jew as they appear in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist. It argues that Oliver Twist complicates received notions of the Jewish house through the juxtaposition of scenes of locking, containment, and enclosure with the portrayal of unwieldy and transgressive flows, circulations, and currents. It also considers how interaction with Jews prompts a reform in Dickens, leading him to offer an account that radically departs from the antisemitic images of Oliver Twist.Less
This book has investigated the antisemitism at work in English texts, showing that such texts contain offensive fantasies about a supposed “Jewish” menace that stand in tension with counternarratives about an English Christian reliance on, desire for, and similitude to the “Jewish” materialisms Christianity claims to reject. Representations of the accommodated Jew thus reveal both an offensive politics of rejection and an ideological embrace of the Jew as a tool for accommodating the English to their messy urban materialisms. This coda discusses the implications of the book's findings for later English images of the Jew as they appear in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist. It argues that Oliver Twist complicates received notions of the Jewish house through the juxtaposition of scenes of locking, containment, and enclosure with the portrayal of unwieldy and transgressive flows, circulations, and currents. It also considers how interaction with Jews prompts a reform in Dickens, leading him to offer an account that radically departs from the antisemitic images of Oliver Twist.
