Annotated Bibliography
This is Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous Canterbury tales. I only used it as an example of an English writer playing off the Jewish stereotypes. The Prioress’s tale is real, but whether a Jew named Copin killed Hugh of Lincoln, well no one will probably ever truly know. It was a useful piece of literature to show how time seemed to have little to do with the stereotypes of Jews in both Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s time.
Court, Elisa Narin van. “Invisible in Oxford: Medieval Jewish History in Modern England.” Shofar 26, no. 3 (Spring 2008): 1 – VIII.
Court’s walk through Oxford shows a truly hidden history that many English people know little about. Her introduction to finding the plaque, or stone, that denoted the Oxford Botanical Gardens was once a Jewish Cemetery was intriguing and there is no doubt that the true history of the Jewish population living in England during the medieval period has taken a back seat to the stereotypes that prevailed while they lived there. What wasn’t mentioned in my paper was her discovery that Jews owned mercantile shops and were not just moneylenders. They also owned houses and had a synagogue in Oxford.
Kaplan, M. Lindsay. “Jessica’s Mother: Medieval Constructions of Jewish Race and Gender in ‘The Merchant of Venice.’” Shakespeare Quarterly 58, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 1–30.
Kaplan’s article had a lot more than I used in my paper. I found I could have ran on for another twenty to thirty pages if I wanted put all of these ideas into one paper. Kaplan focused on the marriage of a Jewish woman to a Christian man and how that made no difference in a Jewish woman’s life in those times. What it did do was ensure a great conversion to Christianity, as daughters of Jews were an imperfect form of Jews and became the subordinate of the Christian man. She wrote that converting a Jew to Christianity by marriage improved the status of the gentile and ennobled them. Kaplan also wrote about the pictures of Jews and how they were predicted with a darker complexion, while Jesus slowly became a whiter version of a Jew. The truth is sickening sometimes.
Kitch, Aaron. “Shylock’s Sacred Nation.” Shakespeare Quarterly 59, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 131–55.
Kitch compared The Merchant of Venice with The Jew of Malta and traced the trading business of Jews in Italy and England. The article focused on some stereotypes of Jews, but also showed that there were many instances of healthy integration by Jews into the societies they lived in. I found this to be extremely informative, but my paper was focused on the stereotypes of Jews and not how well they got along with their neighbors. Martin Luther’s hatred for Jews was found in this paper, but Kitch mainly focuses on the ability Jews portrayed to survive and trade and become a part of a society, even when society didn’t seem to think there was a need for the Jews. This is the article where my attention caught on the isolation of Jews may have been the reason the Jewish religion still exists today.
Lasocki, David, and Roger Prior. The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England, 1531-1665. Aldershot, England; Brookfield, Vt., USA: Scolar Press ; Ashgate Pub. Co., 1995.
Lasocki and Prior are thorough to say the least. They didn’t leave many stones unturned while investigating the Bassano family. The connections to the Bassanos being Jewish felt a little less solid. Maybe it was because they related the discovery to another author and then drew a straight line from Venice to the town of Bassano Del Goppa and the numerous Jewish families with the last name Bassano. I read most of the book though. It was a fascinating read. The best part for me came with the connection of Emilia Bassano being the Dark Lady in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. There is some pretty strong evidence laid down that can’t be argued as all coincidence. I have always loved to use history to give context to a writer’s work. I will admit, I did not read all the Sonnets, but the connections Lasocki and Prior make with the ones they mention are tantalizing and will definitely lead me to read them thoroughly in the summer. I will probably buy their book too.
Marrapodi, Michele. Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies: Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance : Appropriation, Transformation, Opposition. Farnham, GB: Routledge, 2016.
This was a book that had almost too much information to take in. But there were a few dates that jumped out and gave me some historically background to continue to sift through it. There was a very interesting section on the idea of Shakespeare giving Shylock an Italianate speech to make him seem more foreign to the individuals watching the play. The authors seemed to suggest this functioned as ghettoizing Shylock’s and the other Jews’ speeches. There were many well-examined examples in this chapter on the subtle grammar that went into making Shylock sound different; admittedly, I understood some of it, but felt it would make no real use for my paper, except to show that Shakespeare at least knew enough that he needed Shylock to sound different and look different. The Justice of Venice mockery by Shylock was noteworthy, but I unfortunately did not run down that avenue in my paper. As I said, there was so much to this book that I had to become very selective in what I used. Fascinating read, as are most of these books.
Marx, Steven. Shakespeare and the Bible. Oxford [U.K.]: Oxford University Press. 2000.
Steven Marx makes many valid points on the subject of religion and Shakespeare throughout this book. I unfortunately only used one bit of his book and that had to do with the Chapter that covered The Merchant of Venice. The chapter I used spoke about the differences between Christianity and Judaism, the forgiving religion versus the vengeful one. Marx spoke to the multiple allusions that ran through the play and how they connected to various passages of the Bible. It wasn’t something I was truthfully comfortable writing about with any amount of wording that would sound intelligent or knowledgeable. When I read passages like these, I sometimes nod my head and hope the author is spot on, as I don’t know if I could connect the dots as they have. Especially when it comes to Shakespeare’s intentions and allusions to biblical notions.
Mitilineos, Frances Howard. “English Convivencia: Aspects of Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Medieval England, 1189-1290.” Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago, 2009.
This was an interesting bit of work. Mitilineos didn’t ignore the stereotypes of Jews or the accusations made of ritual murder, but focused on the idea that Jews lived in relative peace with Christians in England and were quite successful for almost 200 years. He did acknowledge the killings and mistreatments of Jews, but it was an in-depth paper on the integration of Jews into the English society from 1066 until their expulsion in 1290. There was an interesting portion that showed Jews and Gentiles committed the same crimes and it was the usual thievery that went on in the medieval times: fake coins, over weighed bags of wheat, and stealing from the King’s forest. Mitilineos does cover the slaughter of Jews at York in 1190, where it is suggested 150 Jews were put to death. He also mentions the killing of Jews during the Crusades as a warm-up for the men going to fight in a holy war. But mainly he takes almost all of the 237 pages to talk about how Jews and Christians lived in harmony for a short time.
Moore, R. I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987. 27-45.
R. I. Moore does a terrific job outlining the Western European society and the escalation of Christians persecuting anyone that didn’t meet the standards set by whomever was in power at the time (my words, not Moore’s). The critical portion of this book details how Jews were treated as well as lepers. There is a small section that talks about the rumors that seemed to spread in regards to the Jews rebelling against Spain, or the Jews and Lepers joining up to poison the wells of wealthy French Christians. It was a great lead off to understanding how Jews came to England and how they were already perceived before moving there. I thought the author brushed over their expulsion from England. The sentence said something like: Edward I had his own reasons for expelling Jews, but not much more. I just wonder, when I read a published piece like that, what were the editors thinking, much less the author. How much more would it have taken to say why Edward I expelled the Jews from England? It was helpful even with my gripes.
Ray, Mohit K. “Shakespeare’s Construction of the Jew.” Interlitrereria 10, 2005: 301-313.
Ray takes a solid stance on how awful England treated Jews and the stereotype that comes out of that treatment. His last words are that Shylock’s image of a Jew sharping his knife on the sole of his boot to carve out a pound of flesh does not imitate the stereotype but grows it and in a hideous way. He brings up the ideas that Shylock is the only truthful character in the play who stands by his word, while the rest of the characters are hypocrites who change their minds on whatever whim is in the air. He mentions the idea of moneylenders in England and that men were becoming powerful without having to inherit the castle and chickens that come with the farm, and Shakespeare plays off that fear of lowbrow people rising to high stations in ways unimaginable just a hundred years before his time.
Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblat, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katherine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr. The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays, the Sonnets. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009.
Katherine Maus wrote a pretty thorough introduction to The Merchant of Venice. I felt that not including her in some aspect of my paper would have been an underhanded thing to do. Her historical context of the anti-Semitic feelings in England after Roderigo Lopez, a Portuguese Jewish convert and doctor to Queen Elizabeth, was accused of trying to poison her, was spot on. I wanted to put that in my paper, and maybe I will before I turn it it, but I think the historical stereotype of Jews stands on its own without pouring gasoline on the fire. But Shakespeare was a man who knew his audience and took full advantage of our human nature to be outraged when the truth is far from our eyes and mouths.
--. 1995. Much Ado About Nothing. New York: Washington Square Press.
--. 2006. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. New York: Washingon Square Press.
I won’t write a hundred words on these. I just know where Jews were mentioned in these plays and I couldn’t find The Two Gentleman of Verona in the Norton book. On that note, I noticed Pericles was absent from the Norton edition as well. (Insert sad emoji face here).
Bottom of Form
Thomas, and Miri Rubin. The Life and Passion of William of Norwich. London: Penguin Books, 2014.
Thomas of Monmouth does a terrific job of investigating a murder of a twelve-year-old boy six years after the fact. I can’t help but feel he made the entire thing up to further his standing as within the clergy. Maybe Thomas had some personal issues with Jews? He created a culture of fear; one that made Christians look at all Jews when a young child went missing. It is sad really. I found this hard to read for the obvious false accusations and scenarios this man made out to be real. The introduction was well researched and gave a wealth of information on how Jews were treated in England before William on Norwich died and long after. I refused to read the “miracles” performed by a dead boy supposedly found in the forest and was as fresh and warm as a child sleeping a month after his brutal murder. This poor kid suffered a brutal attack and someone got away with it and most likely did it again. I won’t be reading this book again.