University of Dayton eCommons English Faculty Publications Department of English 2015 Jewish Culture and Literature in England Miriamne Ara Krummel University of Dayton,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons eCommons Citation Krummel, Miriamne Ara, "Jewish Culture and Literature in England" (2015). English Faculty Publications. 85. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub/85 This Encyclopedia Entry is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Miriamne Ara Krummel Jewish Culture and literature in England A Historical Context and Cultural Backdrop: Being Jewish in Christian England The story of how the medieval English Jews lived their lives in eleventh-, twelfth-, and thirteenth-century England intersects with the realities of the Jews' historical situation. Thinking about the contingent realities of Jewish lives brings us to the Christian community's view of Jews and the Jews' own view of themselves and how the Jews themselves navigated the fraught culture of medieval England. A powder keg, of sorts, resulted after the Normans claimed the seats of power in 1066. This combustible site that was medieval England in the eleventh century involved the English (that is, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and other Germanic tribes) who had arrived in the fifth century; the Norman French who took control over the country in 1066; and the Jews who were imported into England by the Normans (Cohen 2006; 2004; Roth 1964).