The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore / Edition 1

by Alan Dundes

Overview

Alan Dundes, in this casebook of an anti-Semitic legend, demonstrates the power of folklore to influence thought and history.  According to the blood libel legend, Jews murdered Christian infants to obtain blood to make matzah.  Dundes has gathered here the work of leading scholars who examine the varied sources and elaborations of the legend.   Collectively, their essays constitute a forceful statement against this false accusation. 
      The legend is traced from the murder of William of Norwich in 1144, one of the first reported cases of ritualized murder attributed to Jews, through nineteenth-century Egyptian reports, Spanish examples, Catholic periodicals, modern English instances,  and twentieth-century American cases.  The essays deal not only with historical cases and surveys of blood libel in different  locales, but also with literary renditions of the legend, including the ballad “Sir Hugh, or, the Jew’s Daughter” and Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s Tale.” 
    These case studies provide a comprehensive view of the complex nature of the blood libel legend.  The concluding section of the volume includes an analysis of the legend that focuses on Christian misunderstanding of the Jewish feast of Purim and the child abuse component of the legend and that attempts to bring psychoanalytic theory to bear on the content of the blood libel legend.  The final essay by Alan Dundes takes a distinctly folkloristic approach, examining the legend as part of the  belief system that Christians developed about Jews.
    This study of the blood libel legend will interest folklorists, scholars of Catholicism and Judaism, and many general readers, for it is both the literature and the history of anti-Semitism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299131142
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	10/15/1991
Edition description:	1
Pages:	396
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alan Dundes is professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley.  His books published by the University of Wisconsin Press are: Parsing Through Customs:  Essays by a Freudian Folklorist;  Cinderella:  A Casebook; and Little Red Riding Hood:  A Casebook.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Acknowledgments	ix
	Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder	3
	Little St. Hugh of Lincoln: Researches in History, Archaeology, and Legend	41
	Little Sir Hugh: An Analysis	72
	The Prioress's Tale	91
	The Ritual Murder Accusation in Britain	99
	The Hilsner Affair	135
	The Present State of the Ritual Crime in Spain	162
	Damascus to Kiev: Civilta Cattolica on Ritual Murder	180
	Ritual Murder Accusations in Nineteenth-Century Egypt	197
	Twentieth-Century Blood Libels in the United States	233
	The Feast of Purim and the Origins of the Blood Accusation	261
	The Blood Libel: A Motif in the History of Childhood	273
	The Ritual Murder Accusation: The Persistence of Doubt and the Repetition Compulsion	304
	The Ritual Murder or Blood Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization through Projective Inversion	336
	A Selected Bibliography: Suggestions for Further Reading on the Blood Libel Legend	379
	Index	383

Editorial Reviews

What do we know of the power of legend?  How do we put to rest a vicious story, born more than nine centuries ago yet surfacing even today on American television talkshows?  The infamous blood libel legend was partly responsible for the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the basis of persecutions and actual courtroom trials throughout Europe, and exploited in Nazi propaganda.

From the Publisher

An assemblage of essays all treating the bizarre and dangerous blood libel legend, which goes back at least to the 12th century in Europe and continues into the 20th. According to this legend, Jews murder an innocent Christian infant or child for the ritual purpose of mixing the victim's blood with their matzah around Easter time. Paper edition (unseen), $17.50. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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