Prejudice and Law in <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>

Sokol, B. J.

doi:10.1017/ccol0521632250.013

Cited by 6 publications

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“…For critical takes on Portia's legal abuse in the trial scene, seeTucker (1976), Fisch (1974,Jordan (1982),McLean (1996),Sokol (1998), and recentlyTiffany (2006) andBilello (2007).8 Portia: "Tell me where is fancy bred,| Or in the heart, or in the head?| How begot, how nourished?" (3.2.63-65).…”

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Defrauding Daughters Turning Deviant Wives? Reading Female Agency in The Merchant of Venice

Cinpoes

2011

Sederi

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Brabantio’s words “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:| She has deceived her father, and may thee” (Othello, 1.3.292–293) warn Othello about the changing nature of female loyalty and women’s potential for deviancy. Closely examining daughters caught in the conflict between anxious fathers and husbands-to-be, this article departs from such paranoid male fantasy and instead sets out to explore female deviancy in its legal and dramatic implications with reference to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. I will argue that Portia’s and Jessica’s struggle to evade male subsidiarity results in their conscious positioning themselves on the verge of illegality. Besides occasioning productive exploration of marriage, law and justice within what Morss (2007:183) terms “the dynamics of human desire and of social institutions,” I argue that female agency, seen as temporary deviancy and/or self-exclusion, reconfigures the male domain by affording the inclusion of previous outsiders (Antonio, Bassanio and Lorenzo).

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Defrauding Daughters Turning Deviant Wives? Reading Female Agency in The Merchant of Venice

Cinpoes

2011

Sederi

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2011

Sederi

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Whilst the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is itself filled with problems of representation, I will argue in this paper that the greatest misrepresentation of all did not occur in fiction but rather in the English court. During Elizabeth's reign Lord Burghley, working with his secretary Sir Francis Walsingham, systematically misrepresented Spanish culture, deliberately obscuring the English perception of Spanish Golden Age and casting over it a veil of fear. The Earl of Leicester, by contrast, working only to improve his own reputation as a literary patron and man of letters, inadvertently increased English access to Spanish literature as he patronized a coterie of Spanish-speaking scholars at the University of Oxford. These Spanish secretaries translated Spanish literature and created Spanish dictionaries. By analysing the propaganda created under Burghley and the dictionaries created under Leicester, I will show how the English perception of the Spanish Golden Age developed. How, one might ask, was Antonio del Corro's arrival at the university tied to the printing of the first Spanish books in England at the university press? Why did both Leicester and Burghley eventually sponsor Spanish-English dictionaries? How did these different media and dictionaries mediate the English perception of Spain? These are some of the questions my paper will address through examination of the Atye-Cotton manuscripts (now housed at the British Library), a series of pamphlets sponsored by Lord Burghley, and several English-Spanish dictionaries created in the late 16 th century.

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Shackles in Shakespeare: On the Falsity of Personal Liberty in Renaissance England

Barker

2013

Liverpool Law Rev

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Prejudice and Law in The Merchant of Venice

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Defrauding Daughters Turning Deviant Wives? Reading Female Agency in The Merchant of Venice

Defrauding Daughters Turning Deviant Wives? Reading Female Agency in The Merchant of Venice

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Shackles in Shakespeare: On the Falsity of Personal Liberty in Renaissance England

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