Tales of Inter-religious Encounter as “World-Building”: A Globalizing approach to pre-modern Jewish Plurality and Relations with Non-Jews.
CERES-Palais, Raum "Ruhrpott" (4.13)
Start: 12:00 s.t.!
Please, come share your input on an application for an ERC Advanced Grant in progress! This talk shares some of the preliminary findings and theories relating to the circulation of tales about Jews and by Jews throughout the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, West and Central Asia, and North and East Africa from antiquity to the early nineteenth century. First, the utility of using of recent developments in narratological theory and some of Lotman’s ideas about “spheres of meaning” to understand how tales of Jews affected not only Jewish relations with others, but also concepts of otherness as a whole in various societies will be explored. To illustrate these processes, I will examine the interplay between tales about the Virgin Mary and her encounters with the Jews, the rise of the Blood Libel in the Ottoman Empire, and Jewish tales of mighty rabbis, and anti-heroes, namely Mary, Jesus and his disciples. I will show how, together, these tales changed the nature of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations throughout medieval and early modern Eurasia and Africa.
