SAMANTHA ZACHER (ed.). Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture

Abstract

As more scholarly attention has been given to Anglo-Saxon interest in the Old Testament and attitudes towards Judaism in recent years, the field has reached a point where it would benefit from a new articulation of the value of such work. Samantha Zacher acknowledges a ‘decisive change in attitudes towards Jews in England (and western Europe in general) in the twelfth century’ but notes that these new anti-Semitisms supplemented rather than replaced older anti-Judaic rhetoric (pp. 5–6). Accordingly, this book makes the case for studying representations of Jews before 1066, to understand the foundations of the later anti-Semitic hostility and outright violence in England and other parts of Northern Europe. In that respect, this collection of essays serves as a caution against the apologist scholarship we often want to promote, as if to suggest that the Anglo-Saxons (and those who study them) are not really to blame for unfortunate but unrelated later developments. The collection is organized into four parts, each of which is a coherent and engaging unit, but there are several themes or patterns that cut across these divisions—liturgy as a defining element of Anglo-Saxon culture, the uneasiness or instability of Christian (in particular, Anglo-Saxon) relationships with Judaism (both dependent upon Judaism and yet superseding it), and the inescapability of denigration in Christian writings on or representations of Judaism.