The Portrayal of Jews in Nineteenth-Century English Literature | Harold Fisch (essay date 1971)
Harold Fisch (essay date 1971)
SOURCE: "The Romantic Movement and Beyond," in The Dual Image: The Figure of the Jew in English and American Literature, KTAV Publishing House, 1971, pp. 53-79.
[In the following essay, Fisch argues that the literature of the nineteenth-century typically portrayed Jews as evil rather than good, as representing one extreme or the other, and as not being fully integrated with the world of non-Jews.]
The Poets
The Romantic Movement continued much of the inspiration of late eighteenth century benevolence and tolerance. Wordsworth had felt the thrill of the French Revolution and had responded to the new climate of universal brotherhood. It is not surprising therefore that his poems of humble folk, celebrating the sanctities of hearth and home, should have included one or two of Jewish interest. His A Jewish Family (1828) is a descriptive lyric in which the dark-brown curls of the Jewish child more...
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