Reading List: Judaism and 19th-Century British Fiction Seminar
This is the reading list for the graduate seminar I'm teaching this seminar on "Judaism & 19th-C. British Fiction." The course is intended to give a cross-section of nineteenth-century writings about and by Jews, covering a range of attitudes from philosemitic to antisemitic (and Jews' responses to these positions), and addressing how Jews figure in a range of intersecting stories about identity (secular and religious), conversion, assimilation, and nationhood. Students were asked to come into class having read The Merchant of Venice, as the Shylock/Jessica relationship often lurks behind nineteenth-century representations of Jewish domesticity (and conversion). The course does not otherwise presuppose that students will know anything about Judaism (guess what the first session will be about?), although I don't think there's anything on the syllabus likely to provoke as many "huh? what?" responses as Jacob Gordin's The Jewish King Lear, which I taught last year. It will be interesting to see how the more didactic novels go over with the graduate students.
Harrington unit (1 session):
- Maria Edgeworth, Harrington (and correspondence with Rachel Mordecai Lazarus)
- Excerpt from Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain: 1656-2000
- Excerpt from Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: The "Jewish Question" and English National Identity
- Neville Hoad, “Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington: The Price of Sympathetic Representation”
Ivanhoe unit (2 sessions):
- Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
- Excerpt from Frank Felsenstein, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1650-1830
- Excerpt from Ragussis, Figures
- W. M. Thackeray, Rebecca and Rowena
Oliver Twist unit (2 sessions)
- Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
- Excerpt from Endelman, Jews of Britain
- Susan Meyer, “Antisemitism and Social Critique in Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’”
Conversion narrative unit (1 session)
- Grace Aguilar, The Perez Family
- Osborne W. Henery Treighway, Leila Ada
- Excerpt from Michael Galchinsky, The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer
- Excerpt from Nadia Valman, The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture
- Excerpt from Ragussis, Figures
Daniel Deronda unit (4 sessions)
- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
- David Kaufmann, George Eliot and Judaism: An Attempt to Appreciate "Daniel Deronda"
- Mrs. E. A. Germains, Left to Starve, and No One Wants the Blame
- Amy Levy, Reuben Sachs
- Excerpt from Bryan Cheyette, Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society
- Excerpt from Susan Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women's Fiction
- Excerpt from Nancy Henry, George Eliot and the British Empire
Children of the Ghetto unit (1 session)
- Israel Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto
- Excerpt from Endelman, Jews of Modern Britain