Title The Jewess in nineteenth-century British literary culture / Nadia Valman

Published Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 270 pages) : illustrations Series Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 54 Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 54 Contents Cover; Half-title; Series-title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Illustrations; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction: the Jewess question; 2 Repellent beauty: the liberal nation and the Jewess; 3 Jewish persuasions: gender and the culture of conversion; 4 Women of Israel: femininity, politics and Anglo-Jewish fiction; 5 Hellenist heroines: commerce, culture and the Jewess; 6 The shadow of the harem: fin-de-sìecle racial romance; 7 Conclusion: neither wild thing nor tame; Notes; Bibliography; Index Summary Stories about Jewesses proliferated in nineteenth-century Britain as debates about the place of the Jews in the nation raged. While previous scholarship has explored the prevalence of antisemitic stereotypes in this period, Nadia Valman argues that the figure of the Jewess - virtuous, appealing and sacrificial - reveals how hostility towards Jews was accompanied by pity, identification and desire. Reading a range of texts from popular romance to the realist novel, she investigates how the complex figure of the Jewess brought the instabilities of nineteenth-century religious, racial and national identity into uniquely sharp focus. Tracing the narrative of the Jewess from its beginnings in Romantic and Evangelical literature, and reading canonical writers including Walter Scott, George Eliot and Anthony Trollope alongside more minor figures such as Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, Grace Aguilar and Amy Levy, Valman demonstrates the remarkable persistence of this narrative and its myriad transformations across the century Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 246-263) and index Notes Print version record Subject Jewish women in literature. English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. English literature Jewish women in literature Englisch Literatur Jüdin Motiv Vrouwen. Joden. Literair leven. Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780511279430 0511279434 0511278837 9780511278839 9780511484964 0511484968 9780521863063 0521863066

Other Titles Jewess in 19th century British literary culture

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