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Wise Sherri L 2017 Phd.Pdf (1005.Ko) CURSED COMPANIONS: THE LITERARY REPRESENTATION OF JEWS IN THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN PERIODS IN ENGLAND. SHERRI LYNN WISE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO June 2017 © Sherri Wise, 2017 Abstract Despite their expulsion from England in 1290, Jews continue to figure prominently in English literature. This dissertation explores how Jews are imagined in absentia in English literature between the late medieval and early modern periods. Implicitly engaging with periodization, I study several literary texts on either side of the Reformation divide. I examine England's absent Jews through two medieval objects: the writing desk (scrinaria) and the casket (archa) as a means of locating the Jews simultaneously within the literary imagination and historical events. While the New Testament's increasing demonization of Judas entrenched notions of treachery and extended them to all Jews, the Gospels's many contradictions also enabled writers to deploy Jews creatively to explore a host of Christian anxieties. I propose a revisionist reading of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice by connecting the play's caskets and bonds to medieval history and the economic system of the archae. I then move backward in time to explore the original Christian representations of Jews in the Gospels, through the character of Judas, whose contradictory stories make him the first protean Jew. I analyze several of Judas's medieval incarnations: in the Legenda aurea, the Medieval Ballad of Judas and the Corpus Christi plays. I argue that while Judas was fiction created to harmonize the disparate biblical narratives, he becomes implicated in subsequent blood libels. Yet, at the same time, the figure is also used to explore more universal concepts such as subjectivity and free-will. ii The last section of this dissertation examines how Jews figure in three utopian texts. I begin with Thomas More's Utopia and then move to its literary descendant, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. By focussing on how Jewish figures appear in these texts, I am able to look at change and continuity on either side of the Reformation divide. I argue that despite the widespread belief that the Jews had a role to play in the millennium, a fundamental ambivalence about actual Jews remains. I conclude with Milton's Of Reformation, arguing that this most political of poets exemplifies the radical and persistent ambivalence of Christian writers towards absent Jews. iii In memory of my son, Aryeh, whose miraculous life fills mine with wonder. iv Acknowledgments This dissertation was a long time in the making. Its completion was made possible because of the generous support I received from a stellar committee at York University: Professors Deanne Williams, David Goldstein and Elizabeth Pentland not only provided me with crucial guidance, but their compassion, patience and enthusiasm for the project were critical elements in enabling me to finally finish. During my early stages in the graduate program, I was mentored by Professor Ross Arthur who began as my teacher, but then served as my sounding board and muse throughout my course work. I am grateful that he inspired me to “get medieval.” I was also exhilarated and challenged by Professor Sandy Leggatt's course in Shakespearean tragedy at the University of Toronto. I was privileged to be a part of his last graduate class and he transformed the way I read Shakespeare. On the home front, the long period during which I was doing my PhD witnessed three weddings, ten births and the tragic death of my son. But this work was the steady bark sailing on in a sea of roiling mutability. It sustained me; and now, living in calmer waters, I see that its protracted length was a blessing. Two of my sons deserve special mention: Shalom, who provided his antiquated mother with excellent technical assistance, and Moishe, whose natural brilliance and scholarship made him the perfect research assistant, particularly in his field of Jewish Studies. Finally, achron achron haviv: my beloved husband Kenny cannot be thanked enough. His unflagging enthusiasm for this project was matched by his unstinting dedication to our family during the long hours of writing and revision. You are both my bashert and my enabler. v Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................ii Dedication........................................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................v Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................vi Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE “Making a Jewish Choice”: The York Massacre, the archae and The Merchant of Venice............................................................................................................28 I. The Sinking Archa: The Jews in Medieval England...........................................28 II. Playing Shylock.................................................................................................38 III. Caskets in Motion............................................................................................41 IV. Conversion Matters..........................................................................................48 V. Racism: There Will Be Blood............................................................................56 VI. The Lion's Shadow: Jessica as Unassimilable Jew..........................................68 VII. The Upstart Jew..............................................................................................73 CHAPTER TWO “Judas as Enabling Fantasy: Judas in The Gospels, the Legenda aurea, The Medieval Ballad of Judas and the Corpus Christi plays.”..........................................79 I. Four Gospels in Search of a Character.............................................................. 79 II. The Golden Boys: Two Judases in the Legenda aurea......................................99 III. The Same Old Song: The Ballad of Judas......................................................115 IV. Lovers in a Dangerous Text: The Sepher Toledos Yeshu...............................121 V. Playing Jews: Judas and the Jews in the Corpus Christi plays........................126 vi CHAPTER THREE “A World Elsewhere: Jews, Utopia and Readmission”..................150 I. Hope and Hebraism: Slouching Towards the Millennium................................150 II. Funny, You Don't Look Jewish: Raphael Hythloday the Wandering Jew.......170 III. The Science of Happiness: Francis Bacon's New Atlantis.............................184 IV. Millennial Milton: the Interregnum's Eternal Prophet...................................201 V. Jews, He's Just Not That Into You...................................................................217 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................219 WORKS CITED..............................................................................................................226 vii Introduction “Oh, ye merveylous Jewys” (Croxton Play of the Sacrament l.719) In its breathtaking variety of personages, topics and literary genres, Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales might be said to evoke the complex texture of medieval England as a whole. Part of this world, depicted in the tale of the Prioress, concerns medieval anti- Semitism. Yet, due to a series of deft, self-subverting textual moves, Chaucer bequeathed to critics and apologists alike a tale constructed to generate enduring debate while eluding definitive resolution. The “Prioress's Tale” takes the legend of the blood libel, previously circulated in chronicles, ballads, sermons and village gossip and, like the Eucharist which helped to fuel its popularity, it is elevated and aestheticized through art. In its brief two hundred lines, the tale presents a version of a popular Marian miracle featuring a hit-list of anti-Semitic tropes: Jews live among Christians because they are sustained “by a lord of that contree/For foul usure” (1680-1) and they themselves are wholly foul: their hearts replaced by Satanic “waspes nest” (1749) while their bodies are rendered abject, by association with the latrine pit into which they cast their dead victim. While both Jewish and Christian folklore ascribe great power to human blood in general, as R. Po-Chia Hsia explains in The Myth of Ritual Murder, in Christian popular belief, Jews specifically required the salvific power of Christian blood in order to perform their rituals and magic. It was believed that Christian blood was used to make Passover matzos, anoint rabbis, stop menstrual bleedings, prevent epileptic seizures and remove bodily odours (2). Hsia argues that the increased frequency of the accusations of ritual 1 murder in the fifteenth century taps into the growing fixation on Christ's humanity and suffering, as well as the need to see the miraculous: thus when unsolved murders were attributed to local Jews, the elevation of the pious martyr-victim and the
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