Word: svengali
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...complicate matters still more, 43 of Sarita's relatives sued to set aside the entire will, charging that Brother Leo had exercised a Svengali-like influence over a sick old woman of unsound mind. Eventually, Rome's Consistorial Congregation sent Archbishop John Krol of Philadelphia down to Texas to find out what was going...
...loves very much," Sophia tells the endless strangers who ask for The Real Truth, "talks little about it." People say that Ponti serves as an image of the father she never had, but she treats him as if he were her own little boy. They say he is her Svengali, but at most he is only a part-time Svengali, being chiefly concerned with minding their considerable enterprises...
...historical explanation, not even the excellent work by Montagu Modder, The Jew in the Literature of England, can answer these questions. The historical evidence must be combined with a detailed examination of the texts, literary insight and an exploration of myth. Mr. Rosenberg succeeds admirably, and From Shylock to Svengali is the most important and valuable study on the subject...
Rosenberg excavates two late eighteenth century novels, Lewis' The Monk and Godwin's St. Leon, which portray the isolated Jew as black magician, and traces their lineage from Cartaphilus to DuMaurier's Svengali. In Trilby "the myths of Judas and of Cartaphilus met in the figure of a Victorian bogey-hypnotist...
From Shylock to Svengali is a complete, sensitive, well written and valuable work. The only question which Rosenberg does not take up is why the Shylock myth has managed to persist. What repressed fears is society acting out in its persistent creation of the knife bearing villain? Rosenberg says, "I am aware . . . that literary conventions can tell us only so much about a subject which is, as bottom, impenetrable...