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Where are the jews in medieval fantasy?
Disclaimer: fantasy is not my favourite genre, so I may simply be missing a whole swathe of books which disprove my argument. Also, I'm pretty ignorant about history, so may be spouting crap. My apologies if so :)
A lot of fantasy novels are set in Europe, or region which is obviously meant to represent Europe, set roughly during the medieval/renaissance eras. As well as analogs of european countries like England or France there are also analogs (or straight depictions) of the countries/ethnic groups which interacted with europe in this time ie Asia (Carthak in "The Emporer Mage"), the middle east (the Roknari in the Chalion books), Roma (gypsies) (the Tsingani in Kushiel's Legacy) etc. These depictions are often very stereotypical and exoticised, relying largely on the rather racist and essentialist attitudes of the time rather than modern understandings of what those cultures were/are actually like.
But it suddenly struck me recently: where are the jews? Jews played an important part in european history, and (as far as I can tell) were present in fairly large numbers in most european countries. Yet I can't think of any fantasy which has a non-nomadic discriminated against group which lives within multiple "european" countries and identifies as a separate subculture/religion(*). The closest I can come up with are non-human races (like the ghemphs from "The Isles of Glory"), which gives a biological reason for them to keep to themselves and be treated with suspicion by the locals. I think that's a bit creepy when you think about it as a direct metaphor.
So, have I just been reading the wrong books? Or is this a real blindspot in fantasy? Some googling found me Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, about "a fabled kingdom of wild, red-haired Jews on the western shore of the Caspian Sea", a list of sff by jews, and a bunch of anti-Semitism.
If I'm not imagining it, would people say it's because people aren't comfortable using the racist stereotypes of the time (good!) and don't want to accurately depict how nasty the antisemitism was? (The same way a lot of authors shy away from accurate depictions of the classism and sexism etc) Or is it just because a lot of these stories are based on England, which expelled it's jews from 1290-1656, pretty much exactly the era these stories are set in? In any case I think it's a pity, but I guess my desire for imagination and originality is one of the reasons I tend to avoid fantasy :/
(*) these seem like the most signifiant qualities, at least the ones which lend themselves to telling a different sort of story to the usual fantasy fare.
A lot of fantasy novels are set in Europe, or region which is obviously meant to represent Europe, set roughly during the medieval/renaissance eras. As well as analogs of european countries like England or France there are also analogs (or straight depictions) of the countries/ethnic groups which interacted with europe in this time ie Asia (Carthak in "The Emporer Mage"), the middle east (the Roknari in the Chalion books), Roma (gypsies) (the Tsingani in Kushiel's Legacy) etc. These depictions are often very stereotypical and exoticised, relying largely on the rather racist and essentialist attitudes of the time rather than modern understandings of what those cultures were/are actually like.
But it suddenly struck me recently: where are the jews? Jews played an important part in european history, and (as far as I can tell) were present in fairly large numbers in most european countries. Yet I can't think of any fantasy which has a non-nomadic discriminated against group which lives within multiple "european" countries and identifies as a separate subculture/religion(*). The closest I can come up with are non-human races (like the ghemphs from "The Isles of Glory"), which gives a biological reason for them to keep to themselves and be treated with suspicion by the locals. I think that's a bit creepy when you think about it as a direct metaphor.
So, have I just been reading the wrong books? Or is this a real blindspot in fantasy? Some googling found me Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, about "a fabled kingdom of wild, red-haired Jews on the western shore of the Caspian Sea", a list of sff by jews, and a bunch of anti-Semitism.
If I'm not imagining it, would people say it's because people aren't comfortable using the racist stereotypes of the time (good!) and don't want to accurately depict how nasty the antisemitism was? (The same way a lot of authors shy away from accurate depictions of the classism and sexism etc) Or is it just because a lot of these stories are based on England, which expelled it's jews from 1290-1656, pretty much exactly the era these stories are set in? In any case I think it's a pity, but I guess my desire for imagination and originality is one of the reasons I tend to avoid fantasy :/
(*) these seem like the most signifiant qualities, at least the ones which lend themselves to telling a different sort of story to the usual fantasy fare.
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I'm kinda glad though that it isn't obvious that we are in there, because it *would* be disgustingly stereotyped.
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Mm, I can kind of see that. And there's lots of other non-human races who fit the bill, look at the goblins in HP. Actually..on second thoughts, don't.
I'm kinda glad though that it isn't obvious that we are in there, because it *would* be disgustingly stereotyped.
Yeah, I guess. But the fact that it doesn't even occur to anyone to put you(*) there feels a bit like...erasure.
That and it says something that noone seems to object to all the other racist portrayals :/
(*) Being only one quarter jewish I don't feel comfortable saying "we", but I think one reason it bugs me is because I have no context to imagine what life was like for my jewish forbears in those times, they're not included in the mental image my culture has given me of the past. Which may have something to do with me reading a lot more fantasy than history books, but hey :)
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To me it's really just a case of people writing fantasy and borrowing medieval stuff from it because of the romance of it all, so of course they aren't going to write about some random oppressed minority group that was around at the time. I am Jewish, and it's never occurred to me in the slightest that anyone would purposely put a group into their story that's analogous unless they're specifically referencing actual medieval Europe. I should probably note that I don't read into things and I strongly dislike it when other people read into things what I feel is too much, and this is part of that. Calling it erasure sounds like a huge overreaction to me, honestly. And I don't think I've ever read a history book in my life, but my knowledge of the past isn't informed by swords and sorcery.
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Yeah, the problem with this post is I was figuring out what I thought while I wrote it, and didn't express myself very well. (I'm still figuring that out, btw, so take this comment with a grain of salt :)) I can see how it would be a bit irritating, sorry about that :/
What I meant was: I think the fact that it doesn't occur to fantasy writers (or me, until recently) to even consider having a group like the jews in their story is a symptom of the way jews don't play a part in most people's mental picture of medieval europe. Which I don't think is neccesarily a sign of racism so much as a symptom of how generally over-simplistic and crap most people's understanding of the past is (including mine).
Really, to make any sense this post needed to be preceded by me getting a good hold on what fantasy is and what relationship it has to real history (such a hold I do not have). Maybe I should do a post on that instead :)
Also I got a little sidetracked by my ongoing dissatisfaction with how unimaginative and same-y most fantasy is: Personally I prefer fantasy which, while not neccesarily actually true, feels true and real, and I find this tends to happen when the author does some research and takes some of the more interesting and underused bits of history as inspiration.
Other than that I just like going "Hey, here's a fairly obvious type of story noone seems to be telling, why is that?".