[From Preface]. Any study centred in the exploratlon and analysis of the medieval and Elizabethen images of the Jew might, with some justification. seem redundant and impertinent to a modern reader; for the third quarter of this century has witnessed the almost total obviatlon of a great many such time-honoured images and symbols. The immemorial figure of the Wandering Jew, to cite a sIngle instance, has for the past two decades, attained his country and place of destination - history no longer condemning him to tarry until the Second Coming of the Messiah. Even the deicide Jew has been granted complete absolution, by an offlcial decree from the Vatican, for his complicity in the killing of Christ. It would seem, moreover, that the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews during the course of the Second World War have resulted in an alteration of the Jewish image radically transforming It from one of contempt into one of compassion a living symbol of "man's inhumanlty to man"; and the modern European dramatist has revived the Jewlsh figure on the stage as an instance of almost personal atonement or, alternatively, as a means of scourging the state of middle-class mind which abetted the persecution of the Nazi regime, attacking state policies of inactio and deploring the failure of influentlal powers to resist the blatant inhumanlty perpetrated within Its boundaries. Max Frisch's Andorre and Rolf Hochhuth's The Representative embody, each in its own way the 2Oth century's sense of shame and horror at those events with which the century has yet to come to terms. They are both extreme reactions agalnst the image of the Jew whlch the Nazi propogandized in the 1930s. And the image which the Nazis propogandized was curiously consistent wlth the medieval and Elizabethan images of the Jew.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:rhodes/vital:2322 |
| Date | January 1966 |
| Creators | Durbach, Errol |
| Publisher | Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, English |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | 194 p., pdf |
| Rights | Durbach, Errol |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds