Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew

Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew

Biberman, Matthew

Paperback

Series: Women and Gender in the Early Modern World

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1138257974
ISBN13: 9781138257979
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Oct 19 2016
Pages: 274
Weight: 0.82
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
This study argues that modern antisemitism 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 antisemitism 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 antisemitism changes, becoming instead the mark of effeminate behavior. Consequently, the central antisemitic image changes from Jew-Devil to Jew-Sissy. Biberman traces this shift's repercussions, both in Renaissance culture and what follows it. He also contends that as a result of this linkage between Jewishness and the limits of masculine behavior, the image of the Jewish woman remains especially unstable. In concluding, Biberman argues that the Gothic resurrects the Jew-Devil (bequeathing it to the Nazis), and that the horror genre is often a rewriting of Renaissance discourse about Jews.

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