Jacob Feis
* 1842 in Deidesheim; ✝ 1900 in London
Merchant, Scholar
Biography
Much of Feis’s biography remains unknown. We know that he was born in Germany a follower of the Jewish faith. He soon moved to London, where he probably worked as a merchant and became a member of the Athenaeum.
In London, during 1884 Feis published his treatise Shakspere and Montaigne. An Endeavour to Explain the Tendency of ‘Hamlet’ from Allusions in Contemporary Works. In so doing he was taking part in the debate as to how much the later work of Shakespeare was influenced by the writings of the French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). For Feis Hamlet is the fictional incarnation of Montaigne’s scepticism, with Shakespeare clarifying his position on the humanism of the time in this work.
The Shakespeare scholar Feis is likely to correspond to the person who, from 1890, published with a Straßburg-based publisher many translations of English works into German. Amongst them were Tennyson’s poetry collection In Memoriam and a choice of Ruskin’s writings.
Treatises
- Shakspere and Montaigne. An Endeavour to Explain the Tendency of ‘Hamlet’ from Allusions in Contemporary Works. London, 1884.
Literature
Primary Literature
- John Ruskin: Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. Straßburg, 1890.
- John Ruskin: Was wir lieben und pflegen müssen. Eine Sammlung Natur-Ansichten und Schilderungen aus den Werken des John Ruskin. Straßburg, 1895.
- John Ruskin: Wie wir arbeiten und wirthschaften müssen. Eine Gedankenlese aus den Werken des John Ruskin. Straßburg, 1896.
- Wege zur Kunst. Eine Gedankenlese aus den Werken des John Ruskin. 2 vols. Straßburg, 1897-1898.
- In Memoriam. Übersetzung des Gedichtbandes von Alfred Lord Tennyson. Straßburg, 1899.
- Die Steine von Venedig. Übersetzung von John Ruskins The Stones of Venice (1851-1853). 2 vols. Straßburg, 1900.
Secondary Literature
- Arnold, Matthew: ‘Review of Shakespeare and Montaigne’, The Pall Mall Gazette (1885). Published under the pseudonym ‘An old playgoer’.
- Greenblatt, Stephen: Shakespeare’s Montaigne. London, 2013.
- Leo, F. A.: ‘Literarische Übersicht’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 20 (1885). Pp. 287-288.
- Olivier, T.: ‘Shakespeare and Montaigne: A Tendency of Thought’, Theoria, 54 (1980). Pp. 43-59.
- Robbins Hooker, Elizabeth: ‘The Relation of Shakespeare to Montaigne’, PMLA, 17:3 (1902). Pp. 312-366.
Album pages with this person
Citation and Licence
Feis, Jacob, in: The Digital Shakespeare Memorial Album. Edited by Christa Jansohn. URI: http://www.shakespearealbum.de/uri/gnd/172085179. (Accessed on 04.11.2024)
This text is published under the following licence: CC BY-ND 3.0 DE. Digitzed media reproduced with the permission of the library of Birmingham.