The Passion of the Jews of Prague:The Pogrom of 1389 and the Lessons of a Medieval Parody

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Barbara Newman
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
To Receive

Outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in late medieval cities were hardly rare. For that reason, among others, surviving records are often frustratingly brief and formulaic. Yet, in the case of the pogrom that devastated Prague's Jewish community on Easter 1389, we have an extraordinary source that has yet to receive a close reading. This account, supplementing numerous chronicle entries and a Hebrew poem of lament, is thePassio Iudeorum Pragensium, orPassion of the Jews of Prague—a polished literary text that parodies the gospel of Christ's Passion to celebrate the atrocity. In this article I will first reconstruct the history, background, and aftermath of the pogrom as far as possible, then interrogate thePassioas a scriptural and liturgical parody, for it has a great deal to teach us about the inner workings of medieval anti-Judaism. By “parody” I mean not a humorous work, but a virtuosic pastiche of authoritative texts, such as the Gospels and the Easter liturgy, that would have been known by heart to much of the intended audience. We may like to think of religious parodies as “daring” or “audacious,” seeing in them a progressive ideological force that challenges corrupt institutions, ridicules absurd beliefs, and pokes holes in the pious and the pompous. ButThe Passion of the Jews of Pragueshows that this was by no means always the case.

A racial re-framing of Modernity and the Jews

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-129
Author(s):  
Angel Adams Parham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Race And Racialization ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Way

Goldberg presents a nicely argued examination that demonstrates how sociology’s foundational thinkers used the experience of Jews to make sense of the transition from traditional to modern societies. While major European theorists were either negative or ambivalent about the Jewish community, US scholars were more likely to see Jews as pointing the way toward a more modern, diverse America. The US story, however, is more complex, and Goldberg’s analysis would benefit from a deeper, more careful discussion of race and racialization. Jews’ eventual incorporation in the United States required a careful process of de-racialization that culminated in their revaluation as white. But this process was never complete. The periodic resurfacing of race-inflected, anti-Jewish acts testifies to this. If Jews, who have been admitted to whiteness, are still subject to periodic racialization and stigmatization, this strongly suggests that their experience in the United States may represent the limits of full incorporation. If so, there is little hope for other racial outsiders to ever be fully accepted into the US mainstream.

scholarly journals African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) recognize visual attention from face and body orientation

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 20140428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna F. Smet ◽  
Richard W. Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Visual Attention ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Loxodonta Africana ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Body Orientation ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
African Elephants ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Communicative Signals ◽  
To Receive

How do animals determine when others are able and disposed to receive their communicative signals? In particular, it is futile to make a silent gesture when the intended audience cannot see it. Some non-human primates use the head and body orientation of their audience to infer visual attentiveness when signalling, but whether species relying less on visual information use such cues when producing visual signals is unknown. Here, we test whether African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) are sensitive to the visual perspective of a human experimenter. We examined whether the frequency of gestures of head and trunk, produced to request food, was influenced by indications of an experimenter's visual attention. Elephants signalled significantly more towards the experimenter when her face was oriented towards them, except when her body faced away from them. These results suggest that elephants understand the importance of visual attention for effective communication.

scholarly journals Towards the attainment of mindful bodily relations in music education

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-133
Author(s):  
Cecilia Ferm Almqvist
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Electric Guitar ◽  
Relational Experiences ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
To Receive

Recent studies of female guitar students in upper secondary school ensemble education suggest that girls behave, and are encouraged to behave, in more immanent ways than boys. They seem to receive less encouragement to stretch their bodies and become full musical human beings. Instead they become the second musical sex. During the course of my work with the problem of how to create space for girls playing the electric guitar in educational settings, I have continually found myself wondering how to create educational spaces and relations in ways that let all pupils, independent of sex, realize ideas, transcend as musical bodies, and become what they already are. If teachers and pupils are interrelated bodies, teachers must be aware of how they use their bodies when it comes to creating space for all pupils to develop and stretch out their bodies. The actions of the music teacher, as a musical body, must be balanced in relation to the other musical bodies in the room, as well as to physical preconditions, goals, visions, and expectations of the students. In this article, I want to delve into the subject of bodily interaction, teachers’ responsibilities, and questions of intentional educational bodily relations. The aim is to share my close reading of Young’s philosophical thinking regarding gender structures and especially female comportment, motility, and spatiality, and develop a set of prerequisites for intentional bodily (music) educational relations. With a starting point in research-based inspiration and motivation for conducting the current philosophical investigation, I share my close reading of Young’s theories regarding female situated bodies. Continually I relate to excerpts from two interviews with female guitar students, exemplifying musical body-relational experiences. Finally I share and reflect upon a developed thinking about mindful bodily (music) educational relations.

scholarly journals Critical Readings of Franz Kafka’s The Trial

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ayila Orkusa
Keyword(s):  
Literary Text ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
General View ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Literary Circles

Abstract The Trial (1925) yields to interpretations within and outside the literary circles and the general view has been that the text is obscured. This popular submission has affected scholarly attention on the text, but this does not dissuade critical studies on the text. This study engages critical readings of The Trial, paying attention to the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that have formed the grounds of being for such readings, as well as topical and thematic issues in the text. Thus, this paper answers the question on the techniques of studying The Trial. The recent and less recent works on The Trial respectively give attention to both material and nonmaterial worlds as captured in the text. This study explores the historical, philosophical, and formalistic views on The Trial as captured in various studies. The conclusion is that the knowledge of The Trial as a literary text possible through a close reading, even though several readings have treated it as the author’s commentary on his own society. Such readings take a position that the text offers an interpretation of a certain human society somewhere. Yet some of the critical readings treat the text as art and generate literary discourses from it. Keywords: readings, critical, modernist, literature, Kafka

scholarly journals THE PHENOMENON OF DISRUPTED COMMUNICATION IN THE NOVEL “EFFI BRIEST” BY THEODOR FONTANE AND IN THE FILM ADAPTATION BY RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER: SPEECH AND GESTURE

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Александра Владимировна Елисеева
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Film Adaptations ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Theodor Fontane ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Hierarchical Relationship ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Effi Briest

The subject of this article’s comparative intermedial analysis is the phenomenon of disrupted communication in the novel by the German writer Theodor Fontane “Effi Briest” (1895) and in the film adaptation of this work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder “Fontane Effi Briest” (1974). The article consists of five parts: 1) introduction; 2) analysis of dialogues in Fontane’s novel; 3) description of the means of creating the effect of disrupted communication in Fassbinder’s film; 4) comparative analysis of some fragments of two works by the method of close reading; 5) conclusions. Methodologically, the research is based on the achievements of the theory of communication, carpalistics, comparative and intermedial approaches to the study of film adaptations. The main point of the article is that the effect of disrupted communication, which is observed in numerous dialogues of Fontane’s novel, is also created by visual means in Fassbinder’s film, among which a significant place is occupied by a gesture. The gesture of turning away deserves special attention: the characters of the film turn away from each other, turn their backs to the interlocutor and the viewer, turn to their reflection. The unconventionality and intensity of such gestures accentuate the problematic nature of communication between the characters. This structure, peripheral in Fontane’s work, becomes central in the film of Fassbinder, grasping the viewers’ attention. In this regard, the article adds to a traditional discussion about the hierarchical relationship between a literary text and its film adaptation.

scholarly journals The Black Death and its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega: Lessons from History and Archeology

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-96
Author(s):  
Anna Colet ◽  
Josep Xavier Muntané i Santiveri ◽  
Jordi Ruíz Ventura ◽  
Oriol Saula ◽  
M Eulàlia Subirà de Galdàcano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Archeological Evidence ◽  
Anti Jewish

In 2007, excavations in a suburb of the Catalan town of Tàrrega identified the possible location of the medieval Jewish cemetery. Subsequent excavations confirmed that multiple individuals buried in six communal graves had suffered violent deaths. The present study argues that these communal graves can be connected to a well-documented assault on the Jews of Tàrrega that occurred in 1348: long known as one of the earliest episodes of anti-Jewish violence related to the Black Death, but never before corroborated by physical remains. This study places textual sources, both Christian and Jewish, alongside the recently discovered archeological evidence of the violence.

scholarly journals ‘I found this written in the other book’: Learning Astronomy in Late Medieval Monasteries

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Seb Falk
Keyword(s):  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Scientific Skills ◽  
Astronomical Instrument

Recent histories have challenged narratives of a late medieval decline in monastic scholarship. This article extends that work to the natural sciences, showing how monks could learn astronomy and mathematics through their scholarly labour of reading, copying and glossing. Although the processes of learning are often poorly documented, and are often conflated with teaching, it is possible, through close reading of annotations and reconstruction of mathematical processes, to get a glimpse of an individual in the moment of acquiring scientific skills. Focusing on a piece of adaptive copying carried out by an English Benedictine monk c.1380, this article explores the devotional motivations underlying his work, and argues that it was through such copying and compilation that he acquired the expertise necessary to invent an astronomical instrument some years later.

The Medieval Literary Beyond Form, ed. Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. s. Brewer, 2018, xii, 276 pp., 30 b/w ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 337-339
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Middle Ages

We can always use critical studies that question both what constitutes a literary text in the Middle Ages and what form those texts have, as is the case with the essays collected by Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok. They define form as “a historically contingent set of attributes defining privileged texts as literature so that the latter may serve particular social, economic, and political interests” (4). They hasten, however, and quite correctly, to warn us about the difficulty in being overly specific in light of the contingency of such formal criteria, which might undermine the entire effort here to some extent, even though they then emphasize again that the articles “meditate upon the question of the relation between form and the literary” (6), as it manifested itself in medieval and late medieval England, which is supposed to be the exclusive terrain covered here, thought that is not always true. Taking us back to this deliberate (?) seesaw, they then return to highlight that in the pre-modern world the differences between literary and non-literary were rather fluid (8). What might then be the focus of this book? The sub-heading of the book itself leaves us a bit puzzled: “Beyond Form,” so why does the introduction then highlight formality issues so centrally?

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