Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England by Jeffrey S. Shoulson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England by Jeffrey S. Shoulson Esther Liberman Cuenca Jeffrey S. Shoulson, Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2013) 263 pp. The sixteenth century witnessed a tempest of religious change for English people across all social and political divides. The country had undergone three dramatic “conversions:” the deepening of confessional divides between the Church in England and Rome during the reign of Henry VIII, the subsequent fissures between Protestants and Catholics under Mary I, and eventually the growing sectarian differences among Protestants themselves during the Elizabethan era. The great literary works of the early modern period, from Shakespeare [End Page 329] to Milton, reflected these social and cultural tensions, oftentimes in the figure of the Jew. Expelled from English society since 1290, the Jew cast a long shadow over early modern poetics and the rich tradition of biblical exegesis in this period. Jeffrey Shoulson argues that representations of Jews in literature and exegetical commentaries did not derive their symbolic power from realistic or complex depictions of the Jewish people or their religion; rather, archetypal tropes of the Jew stood in for the religious anxieties of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were deployed in a variety of “fictions” of conversion as commentary on broader political and religious changes during these tumultuous centuries. A lesser book might have focused solely on Jewish figures in the great works of early modern literature (Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta immediately comes to mind), but Shoulson’s ambitious meditation also examines two other types of conversion, the translation of classical texts and the science of alchemy, as a result complicating and deepening our understanding of conversion during this particularly fractious period. The introductory chapter spends little time on historiography, instead focusing on understandings of conversion in its various early modern contexts and meanings. One of Shoulson’s primary concerns is fear, particularly fears about social cohesion as manifested in literature and attesting to a deep anxiety about the authenticity of religious conversion. In the early modern Spanish context, the concern over the sincerity of the converso (or the Jewish or Muslim convert to Christianity) was one that intermingled with the general unease over miscegenation and disloyalty to the newly unified Catholic state. In the early modern English context, absent contact with actual Jews, English anxieties over conversion revolved around whether the authenticity of an individual’s conversion experience was sufficiently genuine to merit redemption and divine reconciliation, especially in a climate of millenarian angst. Whether insincere or false, conversions were phenomena whose implications stretched far beyond questions of individual salvation; the spiritual welfare of the realm and the political directives of the state-sponsored English Reformation also hung in the balance. While Jews were far removed from English society in both time (as distant biblical figures) and space (the nearest communities were in Holland), and thus ultimately posed no threat to the precarious status quo, the Jews, because of their unique position as biblical ancestors and antagonists, stood in as proxies for many of theological debates about conversion. The first two chapters of the book focus mainly on biblical conversion narratives that shaped exegetical commentaries. Chapter 1 treats Christian writings on conversion that predated the early modern period, and subsequently influenced the fictions of conversion that form the main focus of this book. The central and early figure of Jewish conversion is St. Paul, whose spiritual redemption on the road to Damascus represented the ideal for most early modern commentators, who sought exemplary models for conversion experiences. Other well-known non-Jewish figures whose conversion narratives influenced the discursive framework upon which early modern literature and commentaries drew included Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. The chap-ter’s most provocative contribution is an analysis of the deep and abiding English interest in the marrano, a derogatory Spanish term for a Jewish convert to Christianity. This term was rarely used in England, but the marrano came to [End Page 330] represent the frightening possibility that conversions could be inauthentic and thus indicative of a larger rot...