TRIALS OF DIASPORA P

In a book that Harold Bloom in The New York Times Book Review called a strong somber book on an appalling subject Anthony Julius offers a wide-ranging and insightful history of anti-Semitism in England the first such study of its kind. Julius focuses on four distinct versions of English anti-Semitism. He first describes the anti-Semitism of medieval England a radical prejudice of defamation expropriation and murder which culminated in 1290 the year Edward I expelled the Jews from England. The second strand is literary anti-Semitism from the anonymous medieval ballad Sir Hugh or the Jew''s Daughter through Chaucer''s The Prioress''s Tale and Shakespeare''s Merchant of Venice to T. S. Eliot and beyond. The third is modern anti-Semitism the commonplace anti-Semitism of insult and exclusion running from the mid-17th century through to the late 20th century. The final chapters then deal with contemporary anti-Semitism emerging in the late 1960s and the 1970s whichtreats Zionism and the State of Israel as illegitimate Jewish enterprises.