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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Foetor judaicus: antisemitism and the excremental imagination in late nineteenth-century French-speaking novels

subject

description

This study examines the relationship between anti-Semitic discourse and excremental olfactory notations in French and Belgian fictional narratives during the second half of the nineteenth-century, including works from the Goncourt brothers, Rachilde, Léon Bloy, and Camille Lemonnier, among others. The novelists use nauseating olfactory notations, often linked to faecal matter, waste, digestion, etc., as clues of a character's ties with the Jewish community. The relationship between anti-Semitic ideology and excremental olfactory notations illustrates complex political, social, cultural, and economic tensions, directly influencing the ways in which literary texts conceive the discourses surrounding alterity. Whilst anti-Semitic ideology considers foetor judaicus an defining olfactory feature of the Jewish community, it appears more as a defining trait of anti-Semitic discourse.