Representations of Jews in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Literature

Download or read book Representations of Jews in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Literature written by John D. Martin and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is commonly held that medieval Christians viewed medieval Jews in exclusively negative terms. This is certainly the dominant opinion in much twentieth-century scholarship, and it is not wholly without justification. It is, however, an opinion that does not accurately reflect the breadth of medieval German Christian thinking about medieval German Jews. Drawing on Passion plays, hagiographical narratives and didactic literature, this monograph reveals a hitherto largely unacknowledged diversity in medieval German representations of Jews. In many of the best-attested texts from the late medieval and early modern periods, Jews appear in German literature as sympathetic, even morally exemplary figures.