Sprache:
Englisch
Erscheinungsjahr:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
Angaben zur Quelle:
99,4 (2000) 537-554
Schlagwort(e):
Wordsworth, William,
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
Kurzfassung:
In July 1828, William Wordsworth and his daughter Dora, along with his friend Coleridge, were traveling in Germany where they encountered a Jewish family while walking along the Rhine. Dora commented on the encounter in her journal, along with the reactions of the two poets. Wordsworth then wrote a poem while on the tour, "A Jewish Family", which was published in 1835. Taken together, these texts provide a view of how certain educated English men and women related to Jews and Judaism in the 19th century. Links Wordsworth's depiction of the Jews in this poem with a re-thinking on his part of his translation of Chaucer's "The Prioress's Tale" (first published in 1820, and again in 1827) with its clear references to ritual murder. Concludes that Wordsworth's attitude toward the Jews was insensitive in the latter case, where aesthetic reasons might excuse his bigotry, and abstractly philosemitic in the former case (in which he idealized and distanced his subjects), where Christian perception could not see Jews in their present state but refashioned them as potential Christians or as images from a biblical past.
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