'Hateful to Crist and to His Compaignye': Theological Murder in 'The Prioress's Tale' and 'The Fixer'

Author / Editor
Dachslager, Earl L.

Title
'Hateful to Crist and to His Compaignye': Theological Murder in 'The Prioress's Tale' and 'The Fixer'

Published
Lamar Journal of the Humanities 11 (1985): 43-50.

Description
The anti-Semitism of PrT is deepened by Chaucer's emphasis on "youth, innocence, and spirituality of the victim." Malamud's "The Fixer"--based on the 1913 trial of a Russian Jew, Mendel Beiliss, for the murder of a Christian boy--humanizes and exonerates Yakov Bok, the falsely accused fictional counterpart of Beiliss.

Chaucer Subjects
Prioress and Her Tale.
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.