“Noch den ̦ewigen Judenʻ drauf…”. Johann Nestroy and the Wandering Jew

  • Federica Rocchi University of Florence / University of Perugia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i5.8771
Keywords: Wandering Jew, Viennese farce, Nestroy, popular theatre, French vaudeville

Abstract

Despite not being one of the most represented plays written by the Austrian playwright Nestroy (1801-1862), Zwei ewige Juden und Keiner (1846), shows to be an interesting farce, where several references to the author’s contemporary society and economy can be observed, as well as many irreverent allusions to the Jewish culture. Nestroy’s parody starts from the double title of the farce, hinting as it does at both the Wandering Jew and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman. A close reading of the most significant passages of the play will thus highlight those themes and underline the author’s intertextual references to the ancient legend of the Wandering Jew and to the main source of his play, that is the French vaudeville Le Nouveau Juif Errant by Antoin-François Varner. Both a comparative and a sociological approach will be employed in the interpretation of the passages of the plays in question.

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Author Biography

Federica Rocchi, University of Florence / University of Perugia

Federica Rocchi is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in German Literature at the Department of Education, Languages, Interculture, Literatures, and Psychology at University of Florence. Her present research focuses on the migration of Jewish intellectuals in Florence in the 1930s. She is also Adjunt Instructor for German Language and Translation at the University of Perugia. 
Her research has mainly focused on Austrian popular drama, on German Cabaret during the Weimar Republic and on the German-Jewish heritage of Central Europe. She has published a monograph where she investigates the creative adoption of foreign sources by the Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy (Johann Nestroy e le fonti europee del suo teatro, Roma 2018) as well as the Italian edition of Nestroy’s play Talisman (Il talismano, Perugia 2016). She has published articles related to German and Comparative Studies on Ferenc Molnár, Arthur Schnitzler and Tom Stoppard.

Published
2021-12-20
How to Cite
RocchiF. (2021). “Noch den ̦ewigen Judenʻ drauf…”. Johann Nestroy and the Wandering Jew. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (5), 413-435. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i5.8771
Issue
No 5 (2021): Historical event, collective trauma and spatiality in contemporary literature and arts
Section
Varia

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