Under Gentile Eyes

As the reader will no doubt recognize, Under Gentile Eyes, the title chosen for this inquiry into some of the sundry ways in which Jews and Judaism have been represented in Christian Europe throughout the centuries, is quite blatantly an echo of Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (1911). While only the slightest of threads tied the Jewish world to the creator of such memorable characters as, to name but two, Lord Jim in the eponymous novel, or Kurz in Heart of Darkness, our title, Under Gentile Eyes, seems to us to epitomize with singular efficacy the intent and the criteria behind this monographic issue of «Materia Giudaica».