Creator Bio
Leslie A. Fiedler
1917–2003
Leslie A. Fiedler, a swashbuckling literary critic, was a loud, provocative voice in American letters. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he flirted with socialism and Trotskyism before serving in the navy as a cryptologist. As a literary man, he straddled the worlds of academe and small magazines; an anti-highbrow, he championed passionate, transgressive writing, explaining, “I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.” His own hot-blooded writing included poetry as well as memoir and fiction.
Content by Leslie A. Fiedler
Primary Source
What Can We Do about Fagin? The Jew-Villain in Western Tradition
The real start of the myth of the Jew with the Knife in English literature goes back to the tale, already hundreds of years old, which Chaucer puts into the mouth of his Prioress, a character faintly…