Love and Anti-Judaism in Medieval English Romance - (Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture) by Hope Doherty-Harrison (Hardcover)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

Love and anti-Judaism is a new examination of medieval romance for the questions it poses of the most significant events in Christian history. Providing new readings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gowther and Sir Amadace, the book argues that romance explores depictions of love--and the sacrifices it may necessitate--in the Hebrew Bible, especially where they do not easily fit into interpretations asserting that this history must prefigure Christ and the crucifixion. An examination of anti-Judaism as a discourse of violence and desire that could be turned inwardly to expose the irresolution in Christianity, this book will provoke new investigations into the religious crises of medieval romance.

From the Back Cover

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

Review Quotes

An immensely learned and thought-provoking exploration of the connections between love and religion in medieval romance, Doherty-Harrison's approach takes the reader beyond conventional readings and opens up a rich world of theological complexity and ambivalence.
- Jacqueline Tasioulas, Professor of Medieval English & Scots, Clare College, University of Cambridge

This exhilarating study of Middle English romance investigates the genre's complex attachments to Christian typology, and specifically to commentary on the Song of Songs and Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac. In a series of nuanced and sophisticated readings, Doherty-Harrison proves medieval romances to be 'vivid narratives of typological confusion, ' which use 'medieval Christianity's most powerful normative structure...typological anti-Judaism' to explore ambivalent individual relations of love, violence, sacrifice, and doubt. 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

About the Author

Hope Doherty-Harrison is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh