• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.483-507
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• 2018

Shylock in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice has been considered as either a devilish villain, or as a victim who was persecuted unfairly by the Christian society in Venice. By focusing on the matter of the Other, which has been summarily overlooked in literary texts and the literary criticism, it is noted that the New Historical and Cultural criticism interpreted Shylock as the racial, religious, and economic Other in the Venetian society which at the time was dominated by Christian ideals. The purpose of this paper is to show how Shylock becomes an abjected Other, that is, the abject, based on Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. According to Kristeva, an abjection is the process of expulsion of otherness from society, through which the subject or the nation tries to set up clear boundaries and establish a stable identity. Shylock is marginalized and abjected by the borders drawn by the Venetian Christian society, which in a strong sense tries to protect its identity and homogeneity by rejecting and excluding any unclean or improper otherness. The borders include the two visible borders like the Ghetto and the red hats worn by the Jews, and one invisible border in the religious and economic fields. By asking for one pound of Antonio's flesh when he can't pay back 3,000 ducats owed, Shylock tries to cross the border between Christians and Jews. Portia frustrates Shylock's desire to violate the border by presenting a different interpretation of the expression, 'one pound of flesh,' from Shylock's interpretation. And in doing so she expels him back to his original position of abject.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.151-170
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• 2018

This paper examines the relationship and ideas of Hannah Arendt and Philip Roth including how they met, their correspondence and intellectual parallels, particularly in their shared criticism of Jewish ideals and culture in Europe and North America. It analyzes similarities in their careers and texts, especially between Eichmann in Jerusalem and Operation Shylock, as well as The Ghost Writer, while measuring their reception as social commentators and writers. Kafka was an important figure for both writers, Arendt's earliest writing engaged with the significance of Kafka in understanding and criticizing twentieth century political and cultural values in Europe. For Roth, Kafka offered a similar critique of moral principles he found corroded in North American Jewish life. Arendt connected with other writers, notably Isak Dinesen, W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell and William Styron who further linked the two: he knew both Arendt and Roth and cited, incorrectly, a work by Arendt as the source for the key incident in his 1979 novel Sophie's Choice. He claimed it was Eichmann in Jerusalem; it was Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt's reaction to Roth's fiction, however, remains a mystery: she died in 1975, before Roth began to seriously and consistently engage with Holocaust issues in works like The Ghost Writer (1979) and Operation Shylock (1993). Yet even in death they are joined. Their graves are only steps apart at the Bard College Cemetery in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.457-466
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• 2005

The main narrative of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice deals with a dispute over the matter of bond in regard to moneylending, and its consequences upon the eventual default. Only the clever interference of a lawyer or judge brings the crisis to an end. In solving his dispute over the bond between Antonio, the merchant of Venice, and Shylock, the money lender and a Jew, Shakespeare offers one of the most famous trial scenes in literature. This trial scene presents the art of arbitration by Portia who was disguised as a Doctor of Law and sheds light on the nature of law, justice, equity, and divine law. What one cannot overlook in this trial scene is the importance of reading ability. After all, interpretation is the next stage of reading. Drawing just verdicts and wise arbitration while at the same time deconstructing the implicit violence and incongruity in law is based on ceaseless effort of analytic and creative act of reading.