ABSTRACT
The records of the legend of the Wandering Jew begin early. The first written account of it is in Roger of Wendover’s Flores Historiarum, a chronicle that begins with the Creation and continues to a.d. 1235. In France the Wandering Jew became known in the form spread by the popular German version of the legend since the year 1604. The atmosphere of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was unpropitious for the flourishing of so romantic a theme as Ahasuerus; even where this fabulous personage was admitted into literature, it was as a comic character. Thus, Ahasuerus appears in French comedies as a buffoon and a singer of couplets. Not until the 1970s of the eighteenth century did the legend begin to exert influence on poetry. It touched M. de Goethe’s imagination; his notes reveal his intention of writing a poem in which Ahasuerus was to be the chief character.
