Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew

Author / Editor
Tomasch, Sylvia.

Title
Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew

Published
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 243-60.

Description
Because Jews were expelled from England in 1290, their presence in English art and literature is "virtual." Tomasch surveys virtual Jews in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, the Luttrell Psalter, and Chaucer's CT (PrT, the Old Man of PardT, ParsT, and Samson in MkT). Such depictions represent Jews in a series of "isotopic variants," good and bad, which constitute an "allosemitism" that generated postcolonial anxiety among Christians and led to suffering by actual Jews.

Alternative Title
Postcolonial Middle Ages.

Chaucer Subjects
Parson and His Tale.
Monk and His Tale.
Prioress and Her Tale.
Pardoner and His Tale.