Civil Antisemitism, Modernism, and British Culture, 19021939 [Paperback]

This book addresses the development of 'civil' anti-Semitism in twentieth-century Britain, a crucial and often critically neglected strand of anti-Jewish rhetoric that, prior to 1934, was essential to the legitimization of proto-fascist political and literary discourses, as well as stylistic practices within literary modernism.Acknowledgments * Introduction: Conspiring to Be Civil: Jews, Antisemitism, and British Civility, 18811939 * Acting Like an Alien: The Rhetoricized Jew in British Immigration Law, 19021914 * Philosemitic Fascists and the Conspiracy Novel * In Search of 'the Jew' in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood * Interlude I: From Courtesy to Etiquette to the 'Uncivil' Jew * Concealing Leonard's Nose: Virginia Woolf, Antisemitism, and 'The Duchess and the Jeweller' * Interlude II: Civil Antisemitism and the Jewish Refugee Crisis of the 1930s * Wyndham Lewis: Jewish Antisemites and Tolerant Britons in the Era of the Jewish Refugee * Conclusion: Conspiring to Be Civil in the Contemporary Moment: The English Defence League

[Civil Antisemitism, Modernism, and British Culture, 1902-1939] contains some crucial insights into our study of antisemitism and modernism. Civil Antisemitism moves us away from the discussion of Jewish stereotype to a method that reveals a hidden and complicated rhetoric regarding Jews, and it opens up a new realm of investigation for those interested in Woolf and Jews. It is a worthy book because its methodology serves as a model for further investigations into the impact of Jews and Jewishness on Woolf and her modernist contemporaries. - Woolf Studies Annual

Lara Trubowitz is an assistant professor of English at the University of Iowa.