The Prioress’s Tale and La France juive: Chaucer in Nineteenth-Century French Antisemitism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article outlines the contexts and consequences of an unrecognized late-nineteenth-century French translation of Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale. Produced by Édouard Drumont as part of his antisemitic bestseller, La France juive, the translation is incorporated into a longer history of ritual murder stories. Praising the tale as a form of historical evidence for antisemitism, Drumont concretizes a link between the medieval antisemitism of Chaucer’s tale and its later modern forms, creating an ethical necessity for the tale’s readers and critics to acknowledge the tale’s role within a longer history of antisemitism.