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| The Blood Libel Legend
ISBN: 9780299131135
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Wisconsin Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Christianity and antisemitism.; Blood accusation.;
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. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Anthropologist and folklorist Alan Dundes was born in 1934 in New York City. He received his BA in English in 1955 and his MAT in English in 1958, both from Yale University. He received his Ph.D in Folklore from Indiana University in 1962 and in 1963 he joined the teaching staff at the University of California, Berkley. He wrote over 250 journal articles and12 books and co-wrote more than 20 other books. In 1993, he became the first American to win the Pitre Prize's Sigillo d'Oro, which is an international life-time achievement award in folklore and ethnography. He died of a heart attack on March 30, 2004 at the age of 70. (Bowker Author Biography) |
