Instrument of Memory

Lisa Lampert-Weissig is Professor of English Literature and Comparative Medieval Studies and Jerome and Miriam Katzin Chair of Jewish Civilization at the University of California, San Diego.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart One: The Wandering Jew and ChristendomChapter One: The Wandering Jew as Relic in Matthew Paris’s Chronica majoraChapter Two: The 1602 Kurtze Beschreibung: A Lutheran RecalibrationPart Two: The Wandering Jew in the Age of EmancipationChapter Three: Eugène Sue’s Le Juif errantChapter Four: Heine and the Wandering Jew’s BeardPart Three: The Wandering Jew and Jerusalem in an Age of Global WarChapter Five: Marc Chagall’s Remembrance and White CrucifixionChapter Six: Uri Zvi Greenberg’s King AhasverChapter Seven: Edmond Fleg’s Jésus: Raconté par Le Juif errantChapter Eight: Sholem Asch’s The NazarenePart Four: Contemporary Encounters with the Wandering JewChapter Nine: Stefan Heym’s Ahasver Chapter Ten: The Wandering Jew in the Twenty-First Century: Eshkol Nevo, Dara Horn, and Sarah PerryConclusionBibliography

“With its new analysis of a well-known and enduringly popular legend and new identifications of Jewish literary and artistic re-imaginings of it, Instrument of Memory will be an important intervention in both literary criticism and Jewish studies. It also provides new insights relevant to our understanding of nationalism and antisemitism, subject areas in which the author has published other important work. For medievalists, it newly demonstrates how medieval Christian tropes and ideas provided the historical infrastructure for antisemitisms of later periods, which is an issue of concern across disciplines.”