Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Jewish Identities
Angaben zur Quelle:
3,2 (2010) 77-92
Keywords:
Gébler, Ernest.
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Antisemitism in literature
Abstract:
Revisits Gébler's 1968 novel "Shall I Eat You Now?" and its film adaptation by Alvin Rakoff, "Hoffman" (1970). Argues that the novel's and the film's protagonist, Benjamin Hoffman, with whom Gébler identified, embodies several monsters of the ages-old antisemitic iconography: Shylock, Dracula, Bluebeard, and E.T.A. Hoffman's Coppelius. Throughout the plot, Hoffman becomes so excessively monstrous that Gébler attempts to use his evils to deconstruct the impulses, mechanics, and myths that create the antisemitic monster figure: monsters connected with food, ingestion, disease, bodily deformation, and contamination. Gébler was a son of an East European immigrant to Ireland, most probably Jewish; he himself was not sure about his identity.
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