Crafting Jewishness in Medieval England: Legally Absent, Virtually Present (The New Middle Ages) - Hardcover

"Working at the intersection of medieval, postcolonial, and Judaic studies, Krummel has createda wide-ranging and interdisciplinary work of scholarship that re-evaluates how anti-Judaism works. Stressing the absence of the Jews even when physically present (transformed into a figure, a symbol, a deicidal monster), the book traces Jewish representation by Christians and (powerfully) by Jews living amongst Christians. Even when expelled from the island in 1290, the Jews continued to haunt, so integral were they to medieval Christian identities. Crafting Jewishness in Medieval England is a carefully researched, disquieting, vigorously argued, and profound book." - Jeffrey J. Cohen, Professor of English and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, George Washington University

"In Crafting Jewishness in Medieval England, Krummel explores the varied and arresting medieval pre-histories of modern racism and antisemitism. Krummel's lively, eloquent and wide-ranging exploration of the Jews' 'virtual presence' in medieval English culture asks timely and challenging questions about religious violence and group identity. Krummel's book not only helps us to think about the vanished English Jews, expelled in 1290, but also suggests provocative and innovative ways of recovering and interpreting the haunting, multiple presences the Jews continued to play in the English, Christian imagination." - Anthony Bale, Reader in Medieval Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London

In Crafting Jewishness in Medieval England, Miriamne Ara Krummel complicates the notion of the English Middle Ages as a monolithic age of Christian faith. Cataloguing and explicating the complex depictions of semitisms to be found in medieval literature and material culture, this volume argues that Jews were always present in medieval England, and it is only because of a misreading of the historical record that medieval England has been considered Judenrein-without Jews.