Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice
Janet Adelman
Abstract
In this book, the author confronts her resistance to The Merchant of Venice as both a critic and a Jew. With a distinctive psychological acumen, this book argues that William Shakespeare's play frames the uneasy relationship between Christians and Jews specifically in familial terms in order to recapitulate the vexed familial relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The book locates the promise—or threat—of Jewish conversion as a particular site of tension in the play. Drawing on a variety of cultural materials, it demonstrates that, despite the triumph of its Christians, The Merchant of ... More
In this book, the author confronts her resistance to The Merchant of Venice as both a critic and a Jew. With a distinctive psychological acumen, this book argues that William Shakespeare's play frames the uneasy relationship between Christians and Jews specifically in familial terms in order to recapitulate the vexed familial relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The book locates the promise—or threat—of Jewish conversion as a particular site of tension in the play. Drawing on a variety of cultural materials, it demonstrates that, despite the triumph of its Christians, The Merchant of Venice reflects Christian anxiety and guilt about its simultaneous dependence on and disavowal of Judaism. In this psycho-theological analysis, both the insistence that Shylock's daughter Jessica remain racially bound to her father after her conversion and the depiction of Shylock as a bloody-minded monster are understood as antidotes to Christian uneasiness about a Judaism it can neither own nor disown. In taking seriously the religious discourse of The Merchant of Venice, the book offers a book both on the play itself and on the question of Jews and Judaism in Renaissance England and beyond.
Keywords:
The Merchant of Venice,
Jews,
William Shakespeare,
Christianity,
Judaism,
Jewish conversion,
Shylock,
Renaissance England,
familial relationship
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226006819 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226006833.001.0001 |
