The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore - Softcover

Dundes, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299131149 ISBN 13: 9780299131142

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991

Synopsis

Alan Dundes, in this casebook of an anti-Semitic legend, demonstrates the power of folklore to influence thought and history. According to the blood libel legend, Jews murdered Christian infants to obtain blood to make matzah. Dundes has gathered here the work of leading scholars who examine the varied sources and elaborations of the legend. Collectively, their essays constitute a forceful statement against this false accusation. The legend is traced from the murder of William of Norwich in 1144, one of the first reported cases of ritualized murder attributed to Jews, through nineteenth-century Egyptian reports, Spanish examples, Catholic periodicals, modern English instances, and twentieth-century American cases. The essays deal not only with historical cases and surveys of blood libel in different locales, but also with literary renditions of the legend, including the ballad "Sir Hugh, or, the Jew's Daughter" and Chaucer's "The Prioress's Tale". These case studies provide a comprehensive view of the complex nature of the blood libel legend. The concluding section of the volume includes an analysis of the legend that focuses on Christian misunderstanding of the Jewish feast of Purim and the child abuse component of the legend and that attempts to bring psychoanalytic theory to bear on the content of the blood libel legend. The final essay by Alan Dundes takes a distinctly folkloristic approach, examining the legend as part of the belief system that Christians developed about Jews. This study of the blood libel legend will interest folklorists, scholars of Catholicism and Judaism, and many general readers, for it is both the literature and the history of anti-Semitism.

About this title

About the Author:

Alan Dundes is professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. His books published by the University of Wisconsin Press are: Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist; Cinderella: A Casebook; and Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook.

From Publishers Weekly:

Easter Saturday, 1144: a 12-year-old boy named William is found murdered in the woods outside Norwich, England. Several years later, Thomas of Monmouth, a monk, learns of William's death and becomes obsessed by it. He hears rumors that Jews crucified William in a bizarre ritual. A Jew converted to Catholicism named Theobald confides that Jews annually sacrifice a Christian child "to show contempt for Christ." Based on this and other hearsay, Thomas writes a re-creation of William's murder implicating Jews, and the blood libel is born. Dundes ( Cinderella: A Casebook ) collects 14 essays analyzing this tale and tracing its metastasis throughout Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. Manifesting itself in cultural contexts as different as Chaucer's "The Prioress's Tale," Spain during the Inquisition and Nazi Germany, the legend has had consistently deadly consequences. Several essays substantially repeat information; one, by Ernest A. Rappaport, is allusive to the point of distraction. Nevertheless, they make a fascinating detective story in which the culprit is the human desire for narrative itself when it serves the goals of racism.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0299131149
• ISBN 13: 9780299131142
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396