Love and Anti-Judaism in Medieval English Romance

Love and anti-Judaism is a new examination of medieval romance for the questions it poses of the most significant events in Christian history. Did the life of Christ change the nature of love? How could the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac, which did not happen, prefigure that of Christ, which did? Can reactions to sexual violence approach the responsibility demanded by sacrifice?

Providing new readings of the richly-studied romances Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo, the book also investigates Sir Gowther and Sir Amadace for their sophisticated responses to these theological questions. The book argues that romance explores difficulties in the Christian practice of reading the Hebrew Bible as a prefiguration of the life of Christ and the history initiated by him. Such a mode of biblical reading is foundational to medieval anti-Judaism, with Jewish interpretations accused of being incomplete or incorrect because they did not depend upon Christ. Focusing on the Song of Songs, Love and anti-Judaism demonstrates that medieval exegesis often depended upon the figure of Synagoga, the personification of Jewish faith and community in the Christian imagination, for the construction of Christ as a lover who sacrificed himself for his bride.

Such dependence enabled medieval romance to build world-shaking ambivalence into its portrayals of love and sexual violence. An examination of anti-Judaism as a discourse of violence and desire that could be turned inwardly to expose the irresolution in Christianity, this book demonstrates that medieval romance reanimates biblical sacrifice in the vulnerabilities of love.