scholarly journals Adapting Shakespeare – Converting Shylock in Michael Radford’s the Merchant of Venice

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Luke Oakes
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
First Century ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Cinematic Adaptation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Dynamic Shift ◽  
Michael Radford

Abstract This article aims to explore the extension and evolution of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice through Michael Radford’s 2004 cinematic adaptation. By investigating the concept of adaptation and the significance of intertextuality, Shakespeare’s source text is considered alongside Radford’s twenty-first century recreation to reimagine and redefine the construction of Shylock as both a comic and tragic device utilized across film and play. Issues of racial and religious prejudices alongside anti- Semitic views were particularly prominent in Elizabethan England and, by concentrating on recontextualisation, this article looks to expose Shakespeare’s characterization as a reflective commentary concerning societal discriminations at the time of the play’s performance. By focusing primarily on Shakespeare’s Jewish Usurer, Radford is able to reconstruct and reestablish the dramatic devices and characters within the cinematic version, metaphorically converting Shylock from comic villain to tragic victim. Finally, it argues that this dynamic shift inevitably metamorphoses Shylock from a spectator’s perspective and provides Michael Radford with an opportunity to offer a social commentary on social inequality in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals “What Should His Sufferance Be?” Protesting Injustice in Shakespeare's Venice and the Age of Black Lives Matter

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-50
Author(s):  
JESSICA WALKER
Keyword(s):  
Martin Luther ◽  
First Century ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Martin Luther King

This essay considers the impossibility faced by The Merchant of Venice’s Shylock in seeking redress for his suffering and how dismissal of his complaints parallels criticism of protests against racial injustice in the twenty-first century, with particular attention to Colin Kaepernick's 2016 protest against police brutality. Venice's idealization of Christ-like passivity and our own age's veneration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence create impossible standards for those attempting to call attention to injustice, leading to condemnation of protesters’ actions and misinterpretation of their motives.

Dust to Dust: An Age Beyond Extremes

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Hannah Holleman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
First Century ◽  
Dust Bowl ◽  
Global Commons ◽  
Freshwater Systems ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter presents the salient features of the Epoch of Ecological Extremes contributing to the development of Dust Bowl conditions today. The twentieth century was deemed “the Age of Extremes.” It is clear, however, that the twenty-first century is poised to surpass the twentieth to become the Epoch of Ecological Extremes. Today the interconnected issues precipitating the new Dust Bowl era are the culmination of increasingly extreme exploitation—in terms of scale and technique—of the land, of the planet's hydrocarbon repositories, and of freshwater systems. As with the 1930s Dust Bowl, this extreme abuse of the global commons is mirrored in the extreme politics required to make such destruction possible. Also like the 1930s, these developments are associated with high levels of expropriation, social inequality, oppression, and dislocation.

scholarly journals How Marston Read His Merchant: Ruled Women and Structures of Circulation in The Dutch Courtesan

Early Theatre ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Male Sexuality ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Source Text ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice

This essay argues that The Merchant of Venice was highly influential on John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, guiding the changes Marston made to his source text. Marston extends Merchant’s critiques of nascent capitalism and is especially critical of the commodifying male sexuality embodied by Freevill and influenced by the characterizations of Portia and Bassanio. Recognizing Courtesan’s debts to Merchant also enables a better understanding of how Marston’s move to the Children of the Queen’s Revels affected his dramaturgy. By showing how Freevill self-consciously and inauthentically performs the role of a romance hero, Marston participates in the company’s characteristic ironizing of romance.

Adapting Kafka’s Ape to the Twenty-First Century: Gesture, Montage, and Performance in Antonietta De Lillo’s Il Signor Rotpeter

Adaptation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette Luciano ◽  
Steele Burrow
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
First Century ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cinematic Adaptation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Narrative Report

Abstract This article explores Italian filmmaker Antonietta De Lillo’s cinematic adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story ‘A Report to an Academy’ in which she incorporates elements from both literary and visual media to create a ‘re-performance’ of an earlier performance, that of Kafka’s Rotpeter. De Lillo through the extensive use of gesture, montage, shift of focus, and other cinematic devices, interrupts and disrupts the narrative ‘report’ thereby ‘shocking’ the viewer in Brechtian fashion into an awareness of the fragility of identity and of the ‘ape’ nature that remains in all of us. De Lillo’s addition of an interview to Kafka’s monologue represents an innovation in Kafka adaptation and within this framework her first person/ape narrator Signor Rotpeter is allowed to respond to what she terms our ‘loss of humanity’. He provides first person/ape evidence of this loss both verbally and through his gestural complex, addressing the disconnect between young and old, the cruelty toward animals, and the violence of everyday life, prompting the viewer to reflect on the lives of those who, like the narrator Rotpeter, are desperately seeking a ‘way out’.

scholarly journals Problemy przekładu terminologii z zakresu prawa na podstawie wybranych polskich tłumaczeń sztuk Williama Szekspira

2020 ◽  
pp. 260-284
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jaworska-Biskup
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Source Text ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Mock Trial ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
The Common ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
English Law

Problems of Translating Legal Language Based on William Shakespeare’s Selected Plays The paper discusses major problems and issues of translating law and legal language into Polish as illustrated by selected examples from William Shakespeare’s three plays: King Lear, The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. The common feature of the plays is the context of the court and the trial. In King Lear, Shakespeare depicts a mock-trial of the main character’s two daughters, Regan and Goneril. The crux of The Merchant of Venice is the proceedings instigated by Shylock against his debtor, Antonio. Measure for Measure features a summary trial of two local rogues, Froth and Pompey, who are brought to justice by the constable Elbow. A comparison of the English original law-embedded scenes with their Polish counterparts shows that Polish translators approached Shakespeare’s legal lexicon differently. They frequently neutralised legal language or offered the equivalents that do not overlap with the source text. The different treatment of legal language by the translators results in various readings and interpretations of the original. The paper also provides a commentary on the basic concepts and institutions of English law in Shakespeare’s analysed plays.

scholarly journals 'The Merchant of Venice': de guetos, espacios y ética y su tratamiento en el aula del nivel superior

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 107-111
Author(s):  
Silvana Noelí Fernández
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Michael Radford

En tiempos de incertidumbre política en Europa y en el resto del mundo es nuestra intención en este trabajo recuperar la dimensión espacial y la singular espacialidad de The Merchant of Venice (1600) para el análisis de esta obra en el aula del nivel superior, es decir, el ámbito de formación de los futuros docentes. En este marco serán objeto de nuestras indagaciones y propuestas didácticas el texto dramático de William Shakespeare, la versión cinematográfica dirigida por Michael Radford (2004) y el documental Imagine … Shylock’s Ghost (2015). Nuestro objetivo es actualizar y reponer en el análisis del espacio veneciano de The Merchant of Venice algunos sentidos de lo que se ha dado en llamar una “ética del gueto”, entendiendo por ésta lo que Stephen Greenblatt y Shaul Bassi denomian “a lived cultural space, a lived religious space,”. En este sentido, aspiramos a, por un lado, problematizar el proceso referencial que lleva a los alumnos a identificar de manera unívoca e irreductible a la Venecia de la obra con un espacio hoy día mayoritariamente caracterizado por una mono cultura turística y, por otro, a direccionar sus trayectorias de lectura y prácticas pedagógicas hacia espacios de compromisos duraderos con la dignidad del Otro.

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