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Article: Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Money-lending and Medieval Society.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- June 8, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SHYLOCK RECONSIDERED: JEWS, MONEY-LENDING AND MEDIEVAL SOCIETY. By Joseph Shatzmiller. University of California Press; 255 pages; $42.50 and [British pounds] 39.95
THE critic's task, wrote Walter Benjamin, is "to brush history against the grain." increasingly, social historians are doing just that, burrowing in long-neglected legal, demographic and financial archives to recapture and restore individuals whom history has neglected, despised or simply misunderstood. Now Joseph Shatzmiller has brought his considerable erudition to bear on the status of Jewish moneylenders in the middle ages, and with it the slippery connections between moral theology, popular ...