Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Shakespeare Quarterly
Angaben zur Quelle:
58,1 (2007) 1-30
Keywords:
Shakespeare, William,
;
Antisemitism in literature
;
Antisemitism History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Christianity and antisemitism History To 1500
Abstract:
Argues that the neo-Aristotelian idea of the inferiority of women that was popular in Shakespeare's England, combined with the Christian idea of the inferiority and necessary subordination of Jews to Christians, led to the image of Shylock's daughter Jessica as a proto-Christian even before her abandonment of her father and marriage to a Christian. Women were considered to have a passive role in heredity, so they could not pass on racial characteristics, such as Jewishness. Consequently, Jewish women, unlike Jewish men, were eminently convertible. Includes medieval Psalter illustrations with images of dark-hued Jewish men associated with negative things; Jewish women, however, were not depicted as dark.
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