Masculinity, anti-semitism, and early modern English literature
Subtitle: from the satanic to the effeminate Jew
By: Matthew Biberman.
Series: Women and gender in the early modern world
Publisher: Ashgate Pub.
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Burlington, VT, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism.; Jews in literature.; Antisemitism -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Antisemitism -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Jews -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Jews -- England -- History -- 17th century.; Antisemitism in literature.; Masculinity in literature.; Satanism in literature.; Sex role in literature.
Description: "Offering a profound re-assessment of the conceptual, rhetorical, and cultural intersections among sexuality, race and religion in English Renaissance texts, this study argues that anti-Semitism is a by-product of tensions between received Classical conceptions of masculinity and Christianity's strident critique of that ideal. Utilizing works by Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe and others, Biberman illustrates how modern anti-Semitism develops as a way to stigmatize hypermasculine behavior, thus facilitating the transformation of the culture's gender ideal from knight to businessman. Subsequently, the function of anti-Semitic image changes from Jew-Devil to Jew-Sissy. Biberman traces this shift's repercussions, both in Renaissance culture and what followed it."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-251) and index.
Table of contents: title: His stones, his daughter, and his ducats : the Jew-devil, the Jew-sissy and the theo-sexual matrix; title: Madam rabbi : representations of Jewish women in English Renaissance drama; title: By thee adulterous lust was driv'n from men : Donne, Milton and the rise of the Jew-sissy; title: She proving false, the next I took to wife : divorce law and violence in Jonson, Cary and Milton; title: He is imitating nobody, and he is inimitable : T.S. Eliot and the antisemitic aesthetics of the Milton controversy; title: When King Laugh come he make them all dance : the Gothic reconstitution of the Jew-devil.