Junior Faculty Fellow 2000-01
Lisa Lampert (English)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
After Eden, Out of Zion:
Creating the Christian in Early English Literature
Medieval representations of Jews and women tend to split into
halves. Idealized Jewish patriarchs contrast sharply with demonized
contemporary Jews; likewise, virgin and whore regard each other
across a conceptual chasm. Current scholarship tends to examine
these bifurcations separately, but I see them as related complications
of the Pauline exegetical tradition that links the spiritual, masculine
and Christian and defines them in opposition to the carnal, feminine
and Jewish. My project examines the ways in which medieval and early
modern authors use these Pauline strategies of opposition to and
identification with figures of Jews and women to create individual
and collective Christian identities. Focusing on the functions of
these paradigms of self-definition, I trace them from their theological
roots to their early modern manifestations, showing how Christian
authors created complex and sometimes contradictory notions of Christian
identity within specific communities. I examine works by Augustine,
Bernard of Clairvaux, Chaucer and Shakespeare, as well as the anonymous
Croxton Play of the Sacrament and the “Mary Plays”
of the N-Town Cycle.
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