Literature and the Study of Anti-Semitism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5733242 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maurice Samuels (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 123 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1223-1233 |
| Publication date | 2018-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/rhy031 |
| OpenAlex | W2894821177 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This article asks what historians might have to learn from recent trends in literary scholarship and takes the example of anti-Semitism in literature as a case study. Focusing mainly on New Historicist critical approaches to literary texts about Jews and Judaism, but also touching on other methodologies, including the psychoanalytic, the article examines what anti-Semitic literature has been shown to reveal about ideologies such as nationalism and liberalism, as well as about the affect or emotion underlying historical processes such as modernization. Drawing on recent studies of Shakespeare, George Eliot, Trollope, T. S. Eliot, Balzac, Céline, and other writers, the article aims to show how reading literary texts in conjunction with non-literary texts reveals new dimensions of the “political unconscious” of the period that produced them. The article concludes by pointing to the narrative elements underpinning all forms of anti-Semitic discourse and suggests that attention paid to the literary dimension of texts brings key aspects of the anti-Semitic mindset into sharper focus.
Art · Historicism · Ideology · Literary criticism · Literature · Narrative · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2015 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |