Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660-1830 (Johns Hopkins Jewish Studies) [Paperback]

Frank Felsenstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1999 | Series: Johns Hopkins Jewish Studies

In Anti-Semitic Stereotypes, Felsenstein focuses on English cultural attitudes toward Jews during what is known as the "longer" eighteenth century, from roughly 1660 through 1830. He describes the persistence through the period of certain negative biases that, in many cases, can be traced back at least to the late Middle Ages. Felsenstein finds evidence of these biases in a wide range of primary sources—chapbooks, ephemeral pamphlets, tracts, jest books, prints, folklore, proverbial expressions, and so on, as well as in the products of higher culture. With the advent of the nineteenth century, however, he sees a gradual development of more liberal attitudes in English society, "inchmeal evidence of the loosening hold upon the collective imagination of medieval beliefs concerning the Jews."

Editorial Reviews

Review

Intelligent and informative. Two aspects are especially valuable. [Felsenstein] makes more extensive use than previous writers of ephemeral literature—tracts, periodicals, chapbooks, sermons, and so forth; and he analyses pictorial evidence, which in practice means satirical prints, with as much care as the written word.

(John Gross Times Literary Supplement )

Felsenstein's book shows just how widespread and persistent... stereotyping was and makes available for further analysis a considerable amount of new information, especially pictorial evidence, which he analyzes brilliantly.

(James Shapiro Shakespeare Quarterly )

Felsenstein's enormously absorbing, fluent yet provocative study ultimately questions the defeat of the image of Jewish 'Otherness'... If the traditional Whig version of history would point towards the triumph of a cosy English tolerance, Felsenstein's study provides powerful support to those scholars of minorities in Britain who would point to the persistence of prejudice.

(Mark Levene Notes and Queries )

A luminous and scholarly survey of a familiar subject from a fresh perspective.

(Michael Shinagel The Age of Johnson )

An excellent example of intelligent, learned, and informative cultural history.

(Vincent Carretta Albion )

About the Author

Frank Felsenstein was Reader in Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Leeds and is now teaching in the united States.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801861799
• ISBN-13: 978-0801861796
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,155,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars bad, but mild for its era, March 24, 2007

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This review is from: Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660-1830 (Johns Hopkins Jewish Studies) (Paperback)

Felsenstein has diligently done a large amount of research into the so-called long 18th century Britain, and how anti-semitic ideas were invidiously propagated in the writings and illustrations of the times. To a modern reader, Jewish or not, this can at times be uncomfortable. For we have seen in our era where such feelings have led, in Germany.

But keep in mind that in the period surveyed, there was not one pogrom in Britain. And perhaps as another mitigating factor, that Britain was rife with all sorts of stereotypes, ethnic, cultural, racial and sexual. When slavery, at least in the British colonies, was condoned as a natural order of things. And where women were denied such suffrage as existed for men (admittedly minimal), because of their supposed inabilities. Set against this, the book's examples are scarcely unique in their invidiousness.