Join BookitisSave favorites, build lists, and follow creators.

Anti-semitic stereotypes

Work detail

Bookitis Pick
Cover for Anti-semitic stereotypes
AS
Image source: Open Library
Frank FelsensteinFirst published 19952 editions

"The Jew of the eighteenth-century imagination," writes Frank Felsenstein, "threatens to overturn and confound the fabric of the social order ... He is the perpetual outsider whose unsettling presence serves to define the bounds that separate the native Englishman from the alien Other. But his alterity is not confined to his imaginative representation. In law, the Jew and the infidel are deemed (according to the famous seventeenth-century jurist Lord Coke) 'perpetui inimici, perpetual enemies ..., for between them, as with the devils, whose subjects they be, and the Christian there is a perpetual hostility, and can be no peace.'". In Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Felsenstein focuses on English cultural attitudes toward Jews during what is known as the "longer" eighteenth century, from roughly 1660 through 1830. He describes the persistence through the period of certain negative biases that, in many cases, can be traced back at least to the late Middle Ages. Felsenstein finds evidence of these biases in a wide range of primary sources - chapbooks, ephemeral pamphlets, tracts, jets books, prints, folklore, proverbial expressions, and so on, as well as in the products of higher culture. With the advent of the nineteenth century, however, he sees a gradual development of more liberal attitudes in English society, "inchmeal evidence of the loosening hold upon the collective imagination of medieval beliefs concerning the Jews."

Overview

Shared work-level identity and catalog context.

First publish date 19951 credited authorSearch language english

Bookitis keeps work pages focused on the shared book identity and the editions that actually belong to it. Unrelated books should not appear here as primary content.

Contributors

People credited with this work in the active catalog.

  • Frank Felsenstein

    Author profile in the active Bookitis catalog

    Open Author

Editions

Publication-specific versions linked to this work only.