Books by Lisa Lampert-Weissig
Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew, 2024
How can immortality be a curse? According to the Wandering Jew legend, as Jesus made his way to C... more How can immortality be a curse? According to the Wandering Jew legend, as Jesus made his way to Calvary, a man refused him rest, cruelly taunting him to hurry to meet his fate. In response, Jesus cursed the man to wander until the Second Coming. Since the medieval period, the legend has inspired hundreds of adaptations by artists and writers. Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew, the first English-language study of the legend in over fifty years, is also the first to examine the influence of the legend’s medieval and early modern sources over the centuries into the present day. Using the lens of memory studies, the work shows how the Christian tradition of the legend centered the memory of the Passion at the heart of the Wandering Jew’s curse. Instrument of Memory also shows how Jewish artists and writers have reimagined the legend through Jewish memory traditions. Through this focus on memory, Jewish adapters of the legend create complex renderings of the Wandering Jew that recognize not only the entanglement of Jewish and Christian memory, but also the impact of that entanglement on Jewish subjects. This book presents a complex, sympathetic, and more fully realized version of the legend while challenging the limits of the presentism of memory studies.
Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew, 2024
Flyer for my book, Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew, which traces the Wand... more Flyer for my book, Instrument of Memory: Encounters with the Wandering Jew, which traces the Wandering Jew from its medieval roots through to the present day using the lens of memory studies. 30% Discount Code: UMS24
Papers by Lisa Lampert-Weissig
Gothic studies, Jul 1, 2024
BRILL eBooks, 2015
Race in the Vampire Narrative unpacks the vampire through a collection of classroom ready origina... more Race in the Vampire Narrative unpacks the vampire through a collection of classroom ready original essays that explicitly connect this archetypal outsider to studies in race, ethnicity, and identity. Through essays about the first recorded vampire craze, television shows True Blood, and Being Human, movies like Blade: Trinity and Underworld, to the presentation of vampires of colour in romance novels, graphic novels, on stage and beyond, this text will open doorways to discussions about Otherness in any setting, serving as an alternative way to explore marginality through a framework that welcomes all students into the conversation.
Modern Language Review, 2007
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 2007
Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, Nov 1, 2008
The Journal of Popular Culture, May 30, 2012
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, Oct 9, 2022
The editorial staff of New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession works hard to ensure that con... more The editorial staff of New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession works hard to ensure that contributions are accurate and follow professional ethical guidelines. However, the views and opinions expressed in each contribution belong exclusively to the author(s). The publisher and the editors do not endorse or accept responsibility for them. See for more information.
Manchester University Press eBooks, Nov 1, 2015
"The lives and work of and Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) and George Sylvester Viereck (1884-... more "The lives and work of and Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) and George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962) have many interesting parallels and intersections. Both were extremely well known in their day. Viereck was hailed as a Wunderkind upon publication of his first volume of poetry, Nineveh, in 1907, the same year that he published his novel, House of the Vampire. While his poetic reputation waned rather quickly, he remained in the public eye as an interviewer, journalist and publisher who had connections to many prominent figures, including Theodore Roosevelt and Sigmund Freud. Ewers was also prolific, creating poetry, novels, films, travel writing and countless essays; he was the most translated author of the Weimar Republic. Both writers were known for their flouting of traditional morals and we can see the influence of the “decadence” movement and writers like Swinburne and Wilde on their work. When they are now mentioned, however, it is often for their support for Hitler’s National Socialist regime. Viereck was imprisoned in the U.S. during WWII for his pro-German views; Ewers was an early member of the Nazi party and was involved in the creation of pro-Nazi propaganda. When Ewer’s controversial earlier writings were scrutinized (and banned) by the Nazis, he nevertheless fought his expulsion from the party. Ewers and Viereck actually crossed paths in the United States during the First World War when they worked together in attempting to rally support for Germany and against Great Britain. Ewers was later interned by the U.S. government for his activities. One important product of Ewers’ sojourn in the U.S. is his novel, Vampir (1922). The novel is the third in a trilogy that includes Ewers’ most well known work , Alraune, the story of a deadly beauty born of a diabolical artificial insemination. The novels feature the exploits of Frank Braun, a reckless and ambiguous protagonist with strong autobiographical connections to Ewers. In my essay I will read Vampir against Viereck’s House of the Vampire, which I believe is an influence on it. I am interested in the ways in which both novels develop a vampire figure who is deeply problematic and dangerous, a user of others’ lives and bodies, but who is at the same time admirable, representative of an elite power for which sacrifice is justified. In House of the Vampire Reginald Clarke, the psychic vampire, preys upon young artists, draining them of their talent, and, in the case of protagonist Ernest Fielding, of their very minds. But at the same time that Clarke displays a corrupting evil reminiscent of Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Clarke is also the embodiment of genius, particularly artistic genius (a characteristic also resonant with Wilde’s work). He is compared to Homer, Shakespeare, Balzac, Napoleon and even to Jesus Christ as a figure that can reshape the world through his ability to absorb and distill the creative essence of those around him. Ewers’ Vampir is set up in such a way that it is not until the end of the novel that the reader, along with the protagonist Braun, realizes that Braun himself is a vampire. Braun has suspected throughout the novel that his German-Jewish lover, Lotte Lewi, has been draining him of blood and energy, but, in fact, Lotte has been sacrificing herself to him and through him to the German Fatherland. World War I has made the entire world athirst for blood and Lotte sacrifices herself to her lover and, through him, to the greater cause of Germany. My essay will provide the background necessary to understand the intersecting lives and art of these two authors and then compare the vampire figures in their novel to try to arrive at an understanding of the most challenging element of each of their biographies: the embrace of Nazism that seems, at least on the surface, to be completely out of step with their unconventional lives and views and the philo-semitism that they each at one time espoused. I will argue that the ambivalent figure of the vampire in their works, a figure who is both destructive, but also worthy of sacrifice. In this way the vampire can be seen as a metaphor for their approach to National-Socialism as an evil necessary for awhat they saw as an overriding greater good, the survival of Germany"
Literature Compass, Dec 1, 2016
This essay focuses on the legendary Wandering Jew in order to explore how elements of transnation... more This essay focuses on the legendary Wandering Jew in order to explore how elements of transnationalism figure into representations of the Jew and Jewish-Christian relations in medieval England and how the Jew figured into emergent English nationalism.
Anglistik, 2019
Bettina Bildhauer, writing of medieval representations of Jews and the monstrous, asserts that "i... more Bettina Bildhauer, writing of medieval representations of Jews and the monstrous, asserts that "it is often not its own misshapen or hybrid body that makes the monster, but its relation to other bodies, social or individual" (2003, 76). In Charles Maturin's 1820 novel, Melmoth the Wanderer, this monstrous relationship is a temporal one, deriving from the complicated and vexed relationship that Christianity posits with its Jewish origins. The uncannily long life of the novel's titular character derives from the legend of the Wandering Jew, who insulted Christ during the Passion and was therefore cursed to linger on earth until the Second Coming. What makes the legendary Wandering Jew 'monstrous' is not his treatment of Christ, but his punishment: the eternity to which he is cursed and the uncanny temporality his presence generates. The Wandering Jew's temporality is always out of sync with the bodies he encounters, both "social and individual," and so too is the temporality of the monstrous Melmoth, who moves in nature-defying ways through time and space, attempting to destroy others in the hope of saving himself. The word 'monster' derives from two Latin verbs monere (to warn) and demonstrare (to show) and we can discern both of these elements in the Wandering Jew legend. The Wandering Jew's cursed state serves as a warning to those who refuse to believe. His unnatural existence demonstrates the consequence of failure to accept Christian temporal order. The Wandering Jew can be seen as a Christian reaction to Jewish refusal to acknowledge Christianity as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. This Jewish refusal also, of course, includes rejection of Christian salvational history and its temporal structures, the very temporal structures that shape the Wandering Jew legend. Christian thinkers and artists from Augustine in the patristic period through William de Brailes, the English innovator of the Book of Hours form, to 19 th -century French writers and artists such as Eugène Sue and Gustave Doré, have therefore often represented Jews as existing outside of time -in the case of the Wandering Jew's long life, excessively, monstrously so. 1 Melmoth is not a Jew, but like the Wandering Jew, his unnatural lifespan results from transgressive behavior. Melmoth's cursed state appears to come from Faustian explorations of forbidden knowledge that the novel never fully explains. Melmoth has "demon eyes" (Maturin 2008, 45), a laugh that "chilled the blood" (66) and a supernatural ability to cross great distances and to penetrate barriers, even the dungeons of the Inquisition, with seeming ease. Maturin draws upon Matthew Lewis's 1796 portrayal of the Wandering Jew in The Monk. There a character describes the Wandering Jew as "an expression of fury, despair, and malevolence, that struck horror to my very soul. An involuntary convulsion made me shudder" (Lewis 2016, 131). In 1 On Augustine and De Brailes see . Discussions of Sue and Doré can be found in essays in Braillon-Phillipe (2001).
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jun 16, 2010
English Language Notes, Sep 1, 2015
Literature Compass, 2016
This essay focuses on the legendary Wandering Jew in order to explore how elements of transnation... more This essay focuses on the legendary Wandering Jew in order to explore how elements of transnationalism figure into representations of the Jew and Jewish-Christian relations in medieval England and how the Jew figured into emergent English nationalism.
Exemplaria, Oct 1, 2016
The role of the Jews in Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale extends well beyond the few direct... more The role of the Jews in Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale extends well beyond the few direct mentions of them. a focus on representations of Jews, both explicit and implicit, in The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale reveals new connections between the pardoner's sinfulness, his sexuality, and his relics. The essay begins with analysis of the tale's allusion to the figure of the Wandering Jew through the figure of the Old man. i argue for the Wandering Jew as a type of relic and for the encounter between the rioters and the Old man as an exploration of what Caroline Bynum calls the "dynamic of seen and unseen" that animates medieval Christian materiality. The essay extends this examination of the relationship between anti-Judaism and Christian materiality to the pardoner's own "relics," the prevalent oaths in The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale, Chaucer's depiction of the pardoner's body, and, finally, to the bitter concluding exchange between the Host and the pardoner. Through this analysis, i show how anti-Judaism both permeates and shapes Chaucer depiction of the pardoner and the pardoner's tale.
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Books by Lisa Lampert-Weissig
Papers by Lisa Lampert-Weissig