Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Dickens Studies Annual
Angaben zur Quelle:
24 (1996) 37-57
Keywords:
Dickens, Charles,
;
Dickens, Charles,
;
Dickens, Charles,
;
Antisemitism in literature
;
Jews in literature
Abstract:
Examines how the narrators in these three books by Dickens engage the problem of narrating (representing) the Jew. Argues that "Oliver Twist" (1837-39) presents a system of antisemitism in which what is at stake is naming Fagin as "the Jew". Fagin is called by his actual name by the characters of the underworld, but the narrator and the middle-class characters refer to him as "the Jew". In Dickens' revision of the novel in 1867, many references to "the Jew" were changed to "Fagin". The epithet "the Jew" remained in Oliver's and in the middle-class characters' discourse - the narrator shifted to a critical distance from the middle-class perspective. Through Riah, the old Jew in "Our Mutual Friend" (1864-65), Dickens reveals that Jewish identity is, in part, formed through a response to Christian representations, including his own. Regarding "A Christmas Carol" (1843), suggests the possibility that Scrooge is a Jew, although he is never referred to as such by the narrator. Contends that the absence of mimetic Jews in Dickens is not a failure of representation, but are rather meaningful and complex Jewish silences. These different narrators present increasingly complex representations of the power of narrating a racial and religious other.
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