Dickensian Disciple: Anglo-Jewish Identity in the Christmas Tales of Benjamin Farjeon
1994; University of Iowa; Volume: 73; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0031-7977
Autores Tópico(s)American and British Literature Analysis
ResumoLeopold Farjeon [1838-1903] was of of race.(1) Perhaps this is casually anti-Semitic remark of one of Farjeon's Victorian contemporaries? It is not. The comment was penned by biographer of his daughter, children's writer Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). In an age familiar with hyphenated identities, it is just anachronistic quality of Eileen Colwell's statement that calls it to attention. Farjeon was not Jewish, he was but Jewish. How are we to understand use of this conjunction? British subject Benjamin Farjeon would have been except that he was Jewish, non-sequitur? Farjeon was English/Jewish simultaneously, an oxymoron? ethnicity and homeland in conflict constituted dilemma by no means unique to Farjeon. What distinguished him was fact that he left such peculiar written record of it. He was prolific author in sentimental realist tradition who published over sixty novels between 1866 and 1904.(2) The incongruity of his enterprise, embracing book genre in one narrative while defending Orthodox Judaism in another, represents an attempt to collapse English birth and Jewish race into common ground of secular national economy epitomized by Dickensian Christmas. It would be too facile gesture merely .to dismiss Farjeon's interest in as an attempt to assimilate Judaism out of existence. The holiday, in both Farjeon's life and novels, was purged of conventional religious import in as much as it functioned as metonymy for Dickens himself. A Carol (1843) equated celebration of nuclear family, ideological backbone of Victorian age, with Christmas. For Farjeon, Dickens and bourgeois values he narrativized replaced Christ child to become that which was exalted. Eleanor Farjeon wrote of her father's desire to author a 'after' his supreme god. . . . He would dedicate his first book to his idol.(3) The very impetus of Farjeon's project is essentially blasphemous. It is, after all, profane literary who reigns supreme. And to honor this god Farjeon bears gift, story 'after' Dickens, written in 'imitation of deified figure. The book is identified as graven image for false idol. Yet contemporary reviews laud Farjeon as an advocate for kind of worldly national faith. British newspapers describe him as a of brotherhood of rich and poor, more powerful, graphic, and tender than any since Dickens; his writing - especially his Tales - are to thinking stories in language.(4) So, it is Jew Farjeon, through his fictions, that ministers to Empire. He is preacher of Word, our language, perfect[ed] in Dickensian genre of Christmas Tales. Hyperbolic praise by Farjeon and his reviewers for Dickensian book would seem to bolster Christianity's exclusive claim to culture and by implication to national identity. However, use of religious vocabulary actually mitigates against such ends. After all, even metaphoric deification of Dickens is inherently sacrilegious. But more importantly, theocratic center for Englishness is replaced by figures and texts - preacher[s] - of mass popular culture. God as Word (the Bible), acting as graphemic 1ogos for an Anglo-British nation, gives way to tales as the stories in language. The very redundancy of term most perfect is reminiscent of incongruous label, New Testament, as if second edition of Bible had corrected first which itself was unassailable. Now tale supersedes its own flawless precursor in Christ. Matthew 19:21 (AV) instructs, go and sell that thou hast, and give to poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. Filtered through genre, Christ's words are truncated into the brotherhood of rich and poor. …
Referência(s)