He contrasts the opposing views presented in the two most comprehensive studies of the Jew in English literature, one by Montagu Frank Modder and the other by Edgar Rosenberg.
Edgar Rosenberg, American film and television producer, has characterized 'the image of the Jew in English literature' as having been "a depressingly uniform and static phenomenon".
"[4] In The Canterbury Tales, the Prioress tells a story of a devout Christian child who was murdered by Jews affronted at his singing a hymn as he passed through the Jewry, or Jewish quarter, of a city in Asia.
Allen Koretsky asserts that, because the antisemitism in this tale runs counter to the generally positive image of Chaucer, it has been "ignored, excused, explained or palliated in a number of ways.
[7] George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda (1876) is admired by many for having made an honest attempt to capture the essence of 19th century Judaism by presenting a sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist and Kaballistic ideas, In 20th-century Britain, stereotypes about Jews were both pervasive and damaging, influencing literature, politics, and societal attitudes.
These stereotypes often centered around a few recurring themes, such as financial control, social exclusivity, and untrustworthiness, which were not only present in public discourse but also embedded in British literature.
In his poem "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," Eliot employs antisemitic imagery and references, depicting Jews as materialistic and cosmopolitan interlopers.
[10] Similarly, in "Gerontion," he mentions a "small house agent's clerk" who is seen as a figure of decay and degeneration, an image that feeds into antisemitic stereotypes of the time.
Negative stereotypes of Jews were still employed by prominent twentieth-century non-Jewish writers as well, such as Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene.
Waugh's portrayal of Jews in novels like Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust often reinforced negative stereotypes, depicting Jewish characters as manipulative or greedy.
[12] Greene's literature occasionally touched on similar themes, subtly reinforcing the stereotype of Jews as schemers or morally ambiguous figures.
Anti-Jewish stereotypes portrayed Jews as "aggressively smart and threateningly successful"; they were seen as a threat to American culture because of their "rapid social and economic mobility".
Newspaper accounts and photographs of the time depicted this urban slum as cluttered, disorderly, dirty and smelly; in brief, the living conditions of the Jews were considered to violate middle-class white standards of cleanliness and orderliness.
Alicia Kent notes that, although the photographs of Jacob Riis were motivated by a desire to reform immigrant housing and employment conditions, they ironically helped to fix the public perception of Jews as "disorderly and uncontrollable.
Departing from the usual treatment employed by other American writers of that era, Melville presents a range of Jewish characters that provide the reader a sense of Jews as human individuals rather than as cardboard cutouts.
For example, in The American Scene, Henry James employs a number of anti-Semitic stereotypes to describe the skin color and nose shape of the Jewish residents.
Literature of the time often mirrored these sentiments, using Jewish characters as foils for Christian virtues or as examples of what were perceived as negative traits like greed or betrayal.
A rare exception to the unfavorable stereotyping of Jews is a work by Peter Abelard framed as a dialogue between a Jewish and a Christian philosopher and presents Judaism in a favorable light.
[30] Discussing Voltaire's literary treatment of Jews in works such as Candide, Eric Palmer describes him as having been "uncharacteristically blind to some forms of inhumanity within his sphere.
[35] This dual influence highlights the complexity of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, who, while pushing forward ideas of reason and tolerance, also harbored and propagated prejudiced views against certain groups, thus contributing to a mixed legacy in terms of their attitudes towards Jews.
Honoré de Balzac in La Comédie humaine portrayed Jewish characters such as greedy bankers and art collectors, using stereotypes that associated Jews with manipulation and avarice.
[29][37] Henry H. Weinberg has described the stereotype of the Jewish banker in late nineteenth-century French literature as "shifty, cosmopolitan, cleverly manipulating ... single-minded [in his] quest for money.
These literary choices by Balzac and Sand illustrate how 19th-century French literature often embedded Jewish characters within broader narratives of modernization, class struggle, and societal anxiety, reflecting and reinforcing contemporary prejudices.
[43] Richard Levy characterizes Veitel Itzig, the villain in Gustav Freytag's Debit and Credit as "perhaps the most poisonous stereotype of the greedy, utterly immoral Jewish businessman in nineteenth-century literature."
Zvi Y. Gitelman writes that "Whatever their personal views of the Jewish people, pre-1881 Russian writers fell short of their liberal, humanistic ideals when they wrote of Jews."
In chapter seven of this popular novel, Bulgarin's hero Ivan encounters the dishonest village tavern keeper Movsha and his wife Rifka and chronicles the endless dishonesty of these" Jewish characters.