Framing the Jew: Grillparzer's Die 'Judin von Toledo'

Grillparzer's "Die Judin von Toledo" pits philo-Semitism again anti-Semitism repeatedly and programmatically, thereby foregrounding one of its central themes: the representation of the Jew. This essay interprets the text's contradictory depictions of Jews from the vantage of discourse analysis, arguing that the play stages the formation of "the Jew" as a discursive construct. After situating the text historically and thematically within the context of the Jewish emancipation debate articulated around the 1848 revolutions and demonstrating how Grillparzer draws on a contemporaneous political event, the Lola Montez affair, to cast the Jewish question as a discursive issue, the author offers an extensive analysis of how the figure of "the Jew" is framed in Grillparzer's text. The essay concludes with an evaluation of Grillparzer's complex treatment of anti-Semitism.