Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780–1840

Scrivener, Michael

doi:10.1057/9780230120020

Cited by 40 publications

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“…The same air we have heard twice before, at the play's opening and at Esther's crowning, is probably used a third time in the final scene, when, after Esther's closing speech and before the transparency with the word "PURIM!" on it descends, "The Band strikes up the Chorus-Mordecai enters on horseback [echoing the earlier scene of Haman's humiliation], accompanied by numerous Characters"; together with the painted word Purim, they all group together and "the whole form a Grand Tableau" (30). This extensive and sophisticated use of music, dance, and tableaux that emphasize this amusement as a Purim play does more than deepen meaning, add interest, manipulate emotion, and entertain.…”

Section: Music In Melodramamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…May the sacred tree of liberty never lose a branch in contending for religious superiority; but all be free to worship as he pleases. Let that man be for ever despised who dares interfere between his fellow man and his creed" (30). Her urging universal religious tolerance would certainly seem to apply to everyone: not only asking Christians to accept Jews and vice versa but everyone to accept everyone else's form of devotion.…”

Section: The People's Purimspielmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Melodrama,Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation

Weltman¹

2019

Victorian Literature and Culture

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Long forgotten, Elizabeth Polack (fl. 1835–43) is the earliest known Jewish woman playwright in England. This essay argues that her first play,Esther, the Royal Jewess,or the Death of Haman!(1835), performed at a public playhouse in the Jewish working-class neighborhood of London's East End, radically realigns diverse genres and populations in advocating both Jewish emancipation and a voice for women. By way of a very brief introduction, I first point out the applicability here of Judith Butler'sNotes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Butler explores how group protest, such as Tahir Square or Occupy Wall Street, serves as a kind of communal bodily signification. Of course, her point is not to address how people come together in a public theater, where the cast arrives daily for salaried jobs and the audience plunks down cold cash for a fun night out. Yet something else meaningful can occur in assembly within the theater. Theatrical performances can take on the discursive power of political assembly that Butler defines, signifying “in excess of what is said,” bringing actors and audience together with potentially political valence. Butler helps us understand the stakes of theatrical performance and public assembly and why it is important to examineEsther, the Royal Jewessbeyond recovering a neglected author, though that too is part of my object.

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Section: Music In Melodramamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The People's Purimspielmentioning

confidence: 99%

Melodrama,Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation

Weltman¹

2019

Victorian Literature and Culture

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“…Michael Scrivener, in his book on the figure of the "Jew" in nineteenth-century British culture, follows Janet Adelman in a revisionist reading of Jessica as a tragic figure in the spirit of Romantic performance of Shylock from Edmund Kean on, immortalized in Maurice Gottlieb's 1876 painting Shylock and Jessica (Scrivener, 2011). This has become an icon for modern representation and promotion of the play (for example, in the National Theatre poster for Nunn's production).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

Sicher

2016

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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The Jew's "fair daughter" in Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice converts and marries a Christian, Lorenzo. Recent attention, however, to changing ideas of race and identity in the early modern period has brought into question the divisions of Christian/Jew/Moor. Can Jessica convert and no longer be considered the Jew's daughter? As "gentle" and "fair" is she to be considered gentile and in no way dark (spiritually or racially)? Jessica's conversion has apparently little religious meaning, but rather she is saved from the Jew her father by marriage to Lorenzo, who becomes Shylock's heir. Is Jessica's conversion to be considered a matter of convenience that might, as Launcelot quips, raise the price of hogs, or is it also to be counted as an ideological and racial conversion that reveals underlying anxieties about gender, sexuality, and religious identity? This essay attempts to argue against the grain of the performance history of The Merchant History, which often downplays the role of Jessica or revises the text of the play, and returns to the text in order to contextualize the conversion of Jessica in contemporary discourses of gender, race, and religion in England's expansionist colonialism and proto-capitalist commerce. The conversion of Jessica can be seen in that context as an exchange of monetary and ethical value, in which women's sexuality also had a price-tag. These questions have implications for the teaching of the play and for the understanding of its concerns with unstable sexual, religious, and national identities.

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“…Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” & English National Identity . Duke University Press; Scrivener M. H. (2011). Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780–1840: After Shylock .…”

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confidence: 99%

Tracing social connections in the Victorian Jewish Writers Project

Katzir,

Katzir

2023

Literature Compass

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In March 2022, we launched the Victorian Jewish Writers Project (VJWP), a digital collection of texts written by nineteenth‐century British Jews accompanied by short articles on significant authors, places, and events of the Anglo‐Jewish world. When we began building the collection in 2021, our conceptual framework was clear: Victorian Jewry is underrepresented both in Jewish Studies and Victorian Studies, so we would create a resource to supply primary texts and some analytical information to anyone interested. Despite our familiarity with archive theory, we considered our role in the project as little more than what Latour calls intermediaries, or “mere informants.” Yet, the process of digitizing and publicizing a canon, particularly a canon tied to a cultural heritage, is an inherently social act, and in this article we will explore the modes of social engagement inherent in creating and maintaining digital archives. In particular, we make use of Latour’s actor‐network theory to understand the relationships forged by archives in digital spaces.

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Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780–1840

Cited by 40 publications

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Melodrama,Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation

Melodrama,Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

Tracing social connections in the Victorian Jewish Writers Project

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