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IN THE JEW IN THE TEXT: Modernity and the Construction of Identity (1995) Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb noted that although questions of race, colonialism, and Eurocentrism were now prominent in cultural studies, the ways in which the "Jew" had been represented in modern culture remained relatively unexplored (6). Over the last few years, however, exploration of this kind has burgeoned, bringing with it important challenges both for Jewish studies and for English literary history. The nineteenth century has proved a particularly rich resource for such research, and the importance of this period for considering the relationship between modernity and the "Jew" is underlined by Nochlin:The modern construction of the Jew and the establishing of a coherent Jewish identity may be said to have begun with the construction of modernity itself, in the nineteenth century. This construction is almost synchronous with, though hardly identical to, the growth of mass communication and the possibility of popular representation on a large scale. This fabric of Jewish identity is interwoven with the complex formation of anti-Semitism as an ideological position. Indeed, one might say that Jewish identity and the Jew of anti-Semitism are brought into being by the same representational trajectory. (10) Nochlin's statement points to several of the most important innovations and problems which have characterized recent critical work on Anglo-Jewish literature and textual representations. In the last few years the Victorian period has become a subject of particular interest for critics who see the beginnings of both modern antisemitism and modern Jewish identity articulated in nineteenth-century print culture. Images of Jews, produced by both Jews and non-Jews, are now frequently analyzed not in terms of their relationship to traditions of literary stereotyping, but in terms of their function within discourses of "nation" emerging with particular force in nineteenth-century Europe. Nochlin also rightly acknowledges that the relationship between antisemitic representations and Jewish literature is both close and complex.Nochlin's formulation, however, does not quite do justice to the full implications of the new work in Jewish cultural studies. First, she suggests that the nineteenth century saw 235
IN THE JEW IN THE TEXT: Modernity and the Construction of Identity (1995) Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb noted that although questions of race, colonialism, and Eurocentrism were now prominent in cultural studies, the ways in which the "Jew" had been represented in modern culture remained relatively unexplored (6). Over the last few years, however, exploration of this kind has burgeoned, bringing with it important challenges both for Jewish studies and for English literary history. The nineteenth century has proved a particularly rich resource for such research, and the importance of this period for considering the relationship between modernity and the "Jew" is underlined by Nochlin:The modern construction of the Jew and the establishing of a coherent Jewish identity may be said to have begun with the construction of modernity itself, in the nineteenth century. This construction is almost synchronous with, though hardly identical to, the growth of mass communication and the possibility of popular representation on a large scale. This fabric of Jewish identity is interwoven with the complex formation of anti-Semitism as an ideological position. Indeed, one might say that Jewish identity and the Jew of anti-Semitism are brought into being by the same representational trajectory. (10) Nochlin's statement points to several of the most important innovations and problems which have characterized recent critical work on Anglo-Jewish literature and textual representations. In the last few years the Victorian period has become a subject of particular interest for critics who see the beginnings of both modern antisemitism and modern Jewish identity articulated in nineteenth-century print culture. Images of Jews, produced by both Jews and non-Jews, are now frequently analyzed not in terms of their relationship to traditions of literary stereotyping, but in terms of their function within discourses of "nation" emerging with particular force in nineteenth-century Europe. Nochlin also rightly acknowledges that the relationship between antisemitic representations and Jewish literature is both close and complex.Nochlin's formulation, however, does not quite do justice to the full implications of the new work in Jewish cultural studies. First, she suggests that the nineteenth century saw 235
In 1888, an Orthodox English-language newspaper, the Jewish Standard, published an article series, "Jews in Fiction," that looked critically at Jewish characters in English literature. The series began with Sir Walter Scott's Isaac of York, then featured Benjamin Disraeli's Sidonia and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. After critiquing Fagin and Riah, the April 20th column conjectured what it might look like for Charles Dickens to use his "magician's wand" to write a more nuanced treatment of everyday Jewish life: How he would have reveled in the description of the ostentation, the generosity, the kindliness, the harshness, the thousand and one contradictions to be found in our fellow-Jews and Jewesses. [How he would have treated]… Mr. and Mrs. Z-, with all their children-how they went to synagogue Saturday morning gorgeously attired....Then Dickens would describe how the family go home to luncheon, a better luncheon most likely than on weekdays, because paterfamilias is at home. How our author would revel over the fried fish and various orthodox dainties. (3) Envisioning Jewish life through the lens of an outside observer, the columnist's flight of fancy focuses more on the imagined pleasure Dickens would take in the spectacle, how he would "revel" in the scene, than on the interior lives of the Jewish characters. The writer then exclaims, "Shade of Dickens! would that your mantle might descend on my shoulders, that I might worthily describe all this." The irony is, of course, that the writer has just described this scene, but as the imagined Dickens. This passage from the Jewish Standard dramatizes the pressure of external Jewish stereotypes on the self-conception of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish community. In the very act of portraying this community, the columnist negates the act by calling upon Dickens to make the anonymous columnist a
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