The Image of the Jew in American Literature-Its Ambivalence Deciphered

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The image of the Jew evoked by non-Jewish American writers has oscillated between "the mythical Jew" and "the Jew as a neighbor." The purpose of this study is to trace this ambivalent attitude historically and psychologically. An in-depth analysis from this viewpoint was attempted of such 19th-century poets as Longfellow and Whittier through Hawthorn up to such early 20th-century writers as Henry Adams, Henry James, Mark Twain and Willa Cather. Following are several interim findings :(1) While the tolerant perception of the Jew displayd by Longfellow and Whittier is very impressive, both had their Christian bias reflected in their lines dealing with Jewish or Judaic matters. For instance, the former showed no interest in his contemporary Jews, and the latter infused fervent Christian spirit into his interpretation of the Talmud.(2) An outpouring of violent antisemitic hatred was evident in Hawthorn's English Notebooks, and this animosity found an echo in his fourth major novel the Marb … More le Faun. He utilized the legend of the wandering Jew, but simply represented its cynical aspect as evil incarnated.(3) Facing a crisis of imminent collapse which was brewing in the alienridden American society around the turn of the century, Henry Adams imputed the disintegration of the cherished tradition to the conspiring managerial and financial Jews. His antisemitism was based on the sense of frustration as an unsuccessful heir to the Adams, and also on the despair of ever realizing an ideal of Catholic-centered cultural unity.(4) If Henry Adams and Ezra Pound could be paired as inveterate antisemites, Henry James and T.S.Eliot could be coupled owing to their derisive innuendoes about the Jew which may have been necessitated as a creative technique or may have revealed their own idee fixe.(5) During the process of examining Jewish-related works of Mark twain and Willa Cather as well as the above-mentioned authors, a hard problem was recognized : to which point was the anti-Jewishness of each writer individual, and from where was it collective? Further researches are in order. Less