Davar Akher

“Though it comes into futility and departs into darkness, and its very name is covered with darkness”¹, the archetypal Jew in English literature captivates me. What is it about the miserable fiend who holds me so enthralled? Is it his lisping self-effacement? The simpering manner in which he seeks to gratify his worldly masters whilst nonetheless stabbing them all in the back? Or is it the darkness with which he appears to envelop himself like a thick and dirty cloak, invisible to those who dwell in light and laughter, and detested by the very creator of the world?

There are reams of commentaries devoted to his character; rivers of ink have been spilled in understanding his author’s prejudice. What was the motivation behind the apparent hatred that underlies texts like Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta? What was the root of Chaucer’s fixation with the blood libel in “The Prioress’ Tale”? In answering this question, it is pertinent to note the role of the Jew’s daughter in much of the literature. Both Shylock’s daughter (Jessica) and Barabbas’ daughter (Abigail) serve a common purpose. They abscond from their communities, reject their faith, cause untold despair to their hated fathers, and marry a virile and virtuous Christian man. So triumphs Christianity.

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In an essay entitled “Time”¹, Barry Langford suggests that the chief appeal to be found in The Lord of the Rings is in its unremarked extension. As he explains, all novels require narrative and temporal extension. The diegetic element of the tale (ie: the manner in which the narrative appears to move through a temporal sequence) is always grounded within a broader set of preconditions. A contemporary novel alludes to those broader preconditions in an unremarked fashion, relying upon the reader’s familiarity with the cultural norms of the novel’s setting. Books about modern-day New York do not assume that the reader may be unfamiliar with cars, skyscrapers, stock-market crashes or bureaucracy. These backdrop elements to the story, utilised at will by the author, do not require additional narrative explanation. An historical novel, set for example in Victorian England, does require such explanation and can thus be referred to as a remarked novel. The means by which the author remarks upon the novel’s extension is entirely up to them.

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