Louis Harap (1904-1998) was a librarian at Harvard University's Library of Philosophy and Psychology and managing editor of the progressive monthly Jewish Life, now called Jewish Currents. He also served as librarian at the Lincoln School in New York City. Ellen Schiff is Louis Harap's literary executor. She is professor emeritus of modern language at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Morris U. Schappes is editor of Jewish Currents.
In this exhaustive literary history and sociological study of the Jew's status in American society through 1917, the author intelligently analyzes the various factors shaping the 'image' ranging from the Shylock figure to more sympathetic portrayals. Harap skillfully organizes a voluminous amount of material based on chronology and genre, rather than on literary excellence. Harap appears to have examined every reference to Jews, every appearance of a Jewish character in American poetry and fiction from the days of the Puritans to the end of the 19th century. The rest is a vast compilation that extends and corrects, for the period covered, such previous publications as Solomon Liptzin's The Jew in American Literature. Harap documents thoughoughly the stereotypes that have supported anti-Semitism. He also tends to use the expressed or implicit attitudes toward the Jew as a kind of touchstone in valuing American writers . . . A valuable study and reference work.
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