"He Grows Kind": Reimagining Community in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
This essay takes up the question of community in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (ca. 1600) to explore alternative models that challenge the violently homogenizing and xenophobic society of Christian Venice. Through Antonio and Shylock's bond-of-flesh, the play invites audiences to witn...
| Published in: | Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 107 - 147 |
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| Format: | Article |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Winter2022
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=166096262&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 166096262 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15310485 DBLW jtl: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies issn: 15310485 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2022 vid: 22 iid: 1 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 166096262 10.1353/jem.2022.a902584 ppf: 107 ppct: 40 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2.4MB tig: atl: "He Grows Kind": Reimagining Community in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. aug: au: HUH, JOANNA su: Merchant of Venice, The (Play : Shakespeare) Communities Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962 Christian philosophy Human beings Imagination Self-preservation Individualism sug: subj: Merchant of Venice, The (Play : Shakespeare) Communities Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962 Christian philosophy Human beings Imagination Self-preservation Individualism ab: This essay takes up the question of community in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (ca. 1600) to explore alternative models that challenge the violently homogenizing and xenophobic society of Christian Venice. Through Antonio and Shylock's bond-of-flesh, the play invites audiences to witness the genesis and development of a new mode of interrelationality, evoked by the melancholic condition, propelled by desire for violence, and ensured through risking death. Drawing from Georges Bataille's "law," which insists that human beings are only united to each other through rents and wounds, this article details the way that The Merchant of Venice mobilizes an imaginative possibility whereby damage and vulnerability constitute communion. Contrasting such communion with Venetian sociality, this essay identifies the paradox that sociality--premised as it is on the protection of integral, bounded selves and undergirded by the ideology of possessive individualism--disallows the union for which sacrificial communion strives. Unexpectedly, the destruction and self-abnegation expressed by both Antonio and Shylock catalyze a costly and crucial rethinking of community, one that privileges risk and loss over the rational self-preservation essential to the Christian republican view of community. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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