---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 21:11:23 -0500 (EST)
From: Lawrence M. Clopper <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Mahound, etc.
To Heike--I'm not sure one can be so confident that the name
"Mahound" is not connected with the prophet or the orient. Look at
romances such as Bevis, Guy of Warwick, all those romances in which the
daughter of the emperor is married to an"infidel," Richard the
Lion-heart. These texts were written during or within memory of the
crusades; there is a lot of oriental "lore"--and "othering" in the
period. Try some travel books.
To Tom Corbet's statement that if the Jews were not in England, what
about the Prioress and the Plays at York?: Well, the common wisdom is that
the Jews were expelled at the end of the 13th c., and I recently asked
a distinguished historian whether there might not be "covert" Jews of
some sort in England after that date, and he said "no." If you do not
have the "demonic Jew" in one's presence, surely it is not too difficult
to conjure him up from, e.g., the gospels or the legend of St. Hugh of
Lincoln.
Larry Clopper
