Introduction

Greek Love, Orientalism and Race: Intersections in Classical Reception

“…More strikingly than ever,'the Jew' was overdetermined: infinitely wealthy and yet abjectly poor; refusing to assimilate and yet assuming a false English identity; cosmopolitan and tribal; 'alien' and yet almost overly familiar; ideal colonizer and undesirable immigrant; white but not quite. 117 Although eastern European Jews were not colonial subjects, the huge concerns about their presence on British soil pointedly reflected late-Victorian fears about reverse colonisation. The very slipperiness of Wilde's Mr Isaacs is reflected in his 'greasy ringlets', both an ugly outsider and participant in the imperialist-capitalist enterprise, 'an enormous diamond glazed in the centre of a soiled shirt', this Jew-ellery mirroring Dorian Gray's own obsessive collecting of jewels.…”