Love and Anti-Judaism in Medieval English Romance: Typologies of Violence and Desire - Hardcover
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Description
by Hope Doherty-Harrison (Author)
This book examines the theological questions posed by portrayals of love, sexual violence, and sacrifice in medieval romance. The book argues that these themes are by nature entangled with the discourse of anti-Judaism, which can be turned inwardly to expose irresolution within Christianity itself.
Back Jacket
Love and anti-Judaism examines the questions romance asks of the most significant events in Christian history.
Through close readings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gowther and Sir Amadace, this book demonstrates that romance explores ruptures in the Christian practice of reading the Hebrew Bible as a prefiguration of the life of Christ. Such a mode of biblical reading is foundational to medieval anti-Judaism, with Judaism accused of being incomplete or incorrect because it did not depend upon Christ. Focusing on the Song of Songs, Love and anti-Judaism demonstrates that medieval exegesis often depended upon the figure of Synagoga, the personification of Jewish faith and community in the Christian imagination, for the construction of Christ as a lover who sacrificed himself for his bride.
Such dependence enabled medieval romance to build world-shaking ambivalence into its portrayals of love and sexual violence. Investigating anti-Judaism as a discourse of violence and desire that could be turned inward to expose the irresolution in Christianity, this book demonstrates that medieval romance reanimates biblical sacrifice in the vulnerabilities of love.
'An immensely learned and thought-provoking exploration of the connections between love and religion in medieval romance'.
Jacqueline Tasioulas, Professor of Medieval English & Scots, Clare College, University of Cambridge
'This bracing, highly original book will surely transform the way we understand the relationship between Christian theology and courtly romance.'
Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
Author Biography
Hope Doherty-Harrison is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh