...Marginalization in William Shakespeare’s - The Merchant of Venice The normal human experiences we acknowledge everyday are built of a multitude of emotions, feelings, attitudes, values and characteristics that differentiate us from other beings like animals. The fabric of our human nature is a reflection of the human experience, our beliefs, attitudes, and events that we go through compacting different ideologies into our mindsets. William Shakespeare, through his plays presents these ideologies, attitudes and values, both relevant and present in the Elizabethan context as well as in a modern context. Through a reading and analysis of Shakespearean plays we can see the ideology of how through the marginalization of society, there is a cultivation of the cycle of hatred, leading to revenge, preventable if we are able to open up and be merciful and forgive instead of succumbing to hatred and revenge. These feelings of mercy, hate, forgiveness, and revenge are built into the core of our human nature, and hence it has been present in the people of society during Shakespearean times as well as being easily relatable and understandable to our modern day society, due to it being in the fabric of our human experience and nature since the start of the human civilization. Modern day society struggles with the woes of marginalization on a daily basis, as well as in past important events that has changed the course of history and society. From daily issues such as the people who detests...
Words: 1724 - Pages: 7
...Throughout several of William Shakespeare’s plays, he has a character or characters that dissemble, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary is defined as “to alter or disguise the semblance of (one’s character, a feeling, design, or action) so as to conceal, or deceive as to, its real nature: to give false or feigned semblance to; to cloak or disguise by feigned appearance.” By dissembling or disguising, it allows one to be someone they are not and do things they don’t normally do. In plays such as Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice are just some of Shakespeare’s works in which he utilizes the concept of disguise. Shakespeare uses disguise of behavior and dress in his plays Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice. In Hamlet, Hamlet himself feigns madness in order to seek the truth of...
Words: 1027 - Pages: 5
...William Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice The name William Shakespeare will be remembered for as long as one can imagine. People from all around the world constantly read Shakespeare’s plays, as they are known to be some of the best plays in history because of their unique and profound qualities that helped Shakespeare earn his title of “the greatest dramatist of all time.” Unfortunately, because Shakespeare lived long before modern-day playwrights and poets, the worlds literary society knows much less about him and his background than they do about his plays. Although there is very little evidence that proves Shakespeare’s existence, he did once live during the 16th century. Historians have made assumptions about Shakespeare’s life and the events that he experienced in order to piece together a timeline of the mysterious poet’s life. There are not any actual birth records that exist, but scholars have found church records, which state that a William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Educated assumptions are all that scholars have in terms of sources relating to the early life of Shakespeare. However, information about his adulthood has been gathered and allows for people to get to know the poet a little more personally. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582, in Worcester, in Canterbury Province. Shakespeare was only 18 when he and Anne got married. His young age did not stop him from becoming a father shortly after his...
Words: 2032 - Pages: 9
...Sept 3, 2014 The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice is a play written by Shakespeare, the most influential writer in history. The Merchant of Venice is about a variety of relationships: “Father-daughter; husband-wife; male friends; female friends; money lender-borrower; and Christian-Jew.” The relationship explored in this essay is the father-daughter relationship of Shylock and Jessica. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender in Venice, and he is so immersed in the business that he neglects his daughter Jessica. Shylock despises Christians, because of the mistreatment he suffered at their hands, and he encourages Jessica to do the same. Jessica is very different from her father. She is in love with Lorenzo, a young Christian boy, who her father disapproves of. The relationship between shylock and Jessica is very dysfunctional. Example is when Jessica is talking with Launcelot and she says “I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so; our house is hell, thou a merry devil” (p.30). Jessica detests her home life and wants to leave it behind. She also states “Alack, what a heinous sin is it in me to be ashamed to be my father’s child...I shall end this strife, become a Christian, and thy loving wife” (p.31). Jessica is confined to her father’s wants and wishes, but she is very unhappy. Therefore, when a chance of freedom came she took it. Jessica chooses to elope with Lorenzo, the one she is in love with and convert to Christianity. Shylock was a bad father. For instance, he says...
Words: 2123 - Pages: 9
...A villain is a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot of a play, novel or film. The obvious villains of Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’ would be Shylock and Barabas respectively as these two characters are both depicted as evil and greedy Jews, perhaps due to the racial hatred of the Elizabethan era and the ongoing stigma of Judaism in English society. However, it could be argued that the women of the two plays, including the daughters of the two aforementioned antagonists, Jessica and Abigail, wealthy wife of Bassanio – Portia in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and the cunning courtesan of ‘The Jew of Malta’, Bellamira, are more villainous than the traditional figure of vices of Shylock and Barabas due to the way that the female characters interact with and often disregard the norms of the Elizabethan era and the expected behaviours of women even in modern society. Women in fiction, especially young women, very rarely tend to be portrayed as villainous due to the cultural expectations of femininity. Womanly and feminine traits are those of ones of love, care and innocence, thus women and girls will not be traditionally assumed to be deviant or cruel due to the preconceived idea and judgement that society has on women. In the 21st Century, there is still this assumption in place as women are often able to manipulate the patriarchy and criminal justice system to their own advantage by adopting the traditional female...
Words: 1990 - Pages: 8
...Does Shakespeare reinforce or question contemporary attitudes to cultural outsiders in 'Othello' and The Merchant of Venice? In the plays the Merchant of Venice and Othello, Shakespeare explores the effects of racial oppression and attitudes to race in general. The idea of cultural outsiders is one of the main themes present in the plays. 'Culture' is the customs and social behaviour of particular groups of people and societies and an outsider is a person who does not belong in a particular situation, organisation or community. This definition relates to both Othello and Shylock as throughout the play we see them as victims of prejudice and injustice because of their cultural differences. In the play Othello, Shakespeare expresses the culture outsider, Othello himself in this instance. As a moor. The term Moor means a person or persons of an African descent. During the renaissance time period there were various stigmas attached to 'moors' and other cultural outsiders. Leo Africanus wrote a book named 'the history and description of Africa (1526)' where he portrayed Moors as being extremely prideful. 'Subject unto Jealousy; who would rather lose their lives than put up any disgrace on behalf of the women.' This is ironic and would lead one to believe Shakespeare reinforced Africanus' ideology in the tragic ending of Othello. Shakespeare also reinforces contemporary attitudes to Jews through the protagonist Shylock. During the 1600’s Jews were extremely disliked and according...
Words: 1099 - Pages: 5
...Business - Advertising, Business, Buy Web Sites, Economics, Finance, Management, Marketing, Sell Websites Education - ADHD, Learning, Philosophy of Education, Privatization, Public Schools, School Violence, School Vouchers, Teaching, Technology and Education, Test and Testing, Writing English Composition Essays - Analitical, Autobiographical, Argument, Cause/Effect, Classification, Compare/Contrast, Comparison, Conversation, Creative+Writing, Critical, Deductive, Definition, Descriptive, Description, Dialog, Division, Exploratory, Expository, Informative, Interview, Inquiry, Journalistic, Narration, Observation. Personal Narrative, Place, Profile, Process, Proposal English Literature and Literary Analysis - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A & P, Antigone, Apocalypse Now, Araby, The Awakening, Barn Burning, Beowulf, Beloved, Bible, Birthmark, Blade Runner, The Bluest Eye, Candide, Canterbury Tales, Catcher in the Rye, Cathedral, Chrysanthemums, A Clockwork Orange, The Color Purple, Comparing Literary Works, Crime and Punishment, Death of a Salesman, Death in Venice, Desiree's Baby, A Doll's House, Dr. Faustus, Epic of Gilgamesh, Everyday Use, A Farewell to Arms, Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, Glass Menagerie, Gulliver's Travels, The Handmaid's Tale, Heart of Darkness, The Iliad, Invisible Man, Jane Eyre, The Joy Luck Club, The Lottery, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Metamorphosis, My Antonia, My Papa's Waltz, Neuromancer...
Words: 503 - Pages: 3
...As You Like It presents an ideal world, just as The Merchant of Venice did. The Forest of Arden has as much romance, as many delightful lovers, more laughter and Joy. Lamb, Charles and Mary. Like A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice, it is built by means of two worlds: the world ruled by Duke Frederick and the world of the Forest of Arden. Lamb, Charles and Mary. The effect is not the "separate but equal" envelope structure of A Midsummer Night Dream, nor the interlocking and necessary alternation of The Merchant of Venice; instead, Frederick's world first seems dominant and then dissolves and disappears into the world of Arden. Lamb, Charles and Mary. Its life seems to be in the play not so much for itself as to help us understand and read its successor. There is a set of contrasts between the two worlds of this play, but the contrasts are describable not in terms of opposition of power, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice, but in terms of attitudes of the dominant characters, as in Much Ado About Nothing, and in terms of differences in the settings and of changes in behavior for those characters who are part of both worlds. Lamb, Charles and Mary. These contrasts are easy to describe because Shakespeare points the way clearly, making each world an extreme. Our approach will be to examine the qualities of Frederick's world, then to examine the qualities of Arden, and finally out of this contrast to see how the characters behave in...
Words: 4092 - Pages: 17
...Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy Summary The next day Faust is alone in his study again. Mephistopheles enters, dressed as a nobleman. He tries to tempt Faust by offering him a life of limitless wealth and pleasure, but Faust sadly declines the offer, saying that the world's pleasures cannot end his doubts or satisfy his needs. Mephistopheles taunts Faust for his failure to commit suicide on Easter Eve and drives him to voice a rejection of the value of life and the traditional Christian virtues. The devil urges Faust to begin a new life with his assistance, and to exist no longer as an ordinary human being. If Faust agrees to become his servant after death (i.e. to sell his soul), Mephisto will be his during life and will guarantee to provide all that Faust desires. Faust accepts this offer with some hesitation, for he doubts Mephisto's ability to fulfill his end of the bargain, but makes a significant change in the wording of the pact. Faust promises that if any moment, however brief, is so charged with pleasure for him that he says, "Linger a while! Thou art so fair!" that will be the day of his death and he will serve the devil forever after. Analysis Mephisto's costume in this scene is a reminder to Faust of the narrow limitations on the world in which he has been living until now. Faust's change in wording recalls the divine law that action is the ruling force of the universe, and raises the story of this Faust to a higher philosophical level than that of the...
Words: 13054 - Pages: 53
...The Medici Family and Medici Bank in 14th century The Medici had an inestimable impact and effect upon Florence and the surrounding Italian peoples however this effect was not always positive or beneficial.[] The Medici, through carefully planned moves and states craft and at other times direct violence, worked tirelessly to remove Florence from its republican framework and replace it with a principality of their own. Indeed, by 1537 Florence was no longer a republic and named a duke to lead it now that it had become a principality, that duke was Duke Cosimo De’ Medici I. The move away from republicanism and towards this principality began with three generations of Medici; Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo De’ Medici. Their changes undermined a carefully laid constitution that was intended to keep one or more factions from gaining too much control over the city or for a single person to gain the sole leadership of the republic. However the Medici were able to slowly chisel away those devises of freedom and turn them into instruments of power. In order to fully understand the extent of the Medicean efforts it is important to observe the highlights of the complex system of government that the framers used. The Florentines in the thirteenth century developed a constitution that determined how the republic should be operated. The Florentine constitution was not a single document but rather a series of laws passed as the Ordinances of Justice in 1293 C.E. By this constitution...
Words: 9113 - Pages: 37
...The Merchant of Venice ACT I SCENE I. Venice. A street. Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO ANTONIO In sooth, I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself. SALARINO Your mind is tossing on the ocean; There, where your argosies with portly sail, Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers, That curtsy to them, do them reverence, As they fly by them with their woven wings. SALANIO Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth, The better part of my affections would Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind, Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads; And every object that might make me fear Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt Would make me sad. SALARINO My wind cooling my broth Would blow me to an ague, when I thought What harm a wind too great at sea might do. I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, But I should think of shallows and of flats, And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand, Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs To kiss her burial. Should I go to church And see the holy edifice of stone, And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, Which touching but my gentle vessel's side, Would scatter...
Words: 22174 - Pages: 89
...THE BIBLE’S INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE by Zhang Lanlan June, 2007 Xiaogan University Abstract As the sutra of the Christianity, the Bible has a great influence on both English and American literature and offers an eternal theme of their literary creation .English and American writers use stories of the Bible by three main methods. First, they quote person's names or stories of the Bible as the characters' names or plots of the creations from the Bible directly. Sometimes they make some changes on the original stories. Sometimes they quote stories directly from the Bible as the writing materials. Second, they make use of symbolic meaning of the Bible by some technical such as simile, metaphor and symbolism, so that the stories could exert a great influence on contrasting with the new products. Third, they merge the plots of the Bible to give connotative efforts to the readers. Exploring the methods helps us know the western culture and consciousness, have a good appreciation and study for the English-American literature. key words: English-American literature ; the Bible; methods 《圣经》在英美文学作品中的影响 摘要 作为基督教的经典，《圣经》对英美文化影响深远，为英美文化创作提供了永恒的母题。英美作家化用《圣经》故事的主要方法有：直接引用《圣经》中的人名作为作品的人物名称，或直接引用《圣经》故事或对原型故事进行变形或处理，作为创作素材；通过比喻，隐喻或象征等手法，把《圣经》故事的寓意融汇到作品情节中或人物性格里，使这些故事发挥有力的陪衬作用；使作品中的人物，故事和情节与《圣经》故事大体对应，让《圣经》能穿越时空的限制，从而发挥隐含的参照作用。 探讨英美作家化用《圣经》的方法，有助于我们了解英美文化的思想意识，更好的学习，欣赏乃至研究英美文学作品。 关键词：英美文学；《圣经》；方式 ...
Words: 4063 - Pages: 17
...Index Deposit Banking - Introduction 3 Origins 4 Demand deposits 6 Time deposits 7 Fractional-reserve Banking 8 Full-reserve Banking 10 Bibliography 13 Deposit Banking - Introduction Having money is not always as easy as it seems. Why keeping it at home when there are much safer institutions out there? But, bringing the money to a bank requires knowledge of how to deposit it and of what the bank is actually doing with it. Deciding between the possibility of withdrawing everything or even generating money by investing it for a longer period of time should be a crucial question for every investor. Moreover, the process of depositing it raises disputed questions on who is proprietor and on the possessor’s privilege to handle it. Bank deposits developed and changed throughout history. Farmers, looking for a place to protect their grains from theft, stored their harvest in warehouses in exchange for a receipt and the possibility to get it all back after redeeming it. Later on, owners of gold and silver used the same idea to store their more fungible goods at banks. At the beginning, those deposit banks obtained gain by demanding a fee for the time the good was deposed there. The depositor’s assets remained untouched. It is not difficult to imagine that those institutions succumbed to the temptation of taking them and loaning them away in order to expand their sources of income. This kind of activity is called embezzlement. It means to use entrusted...
Words: 3682 - Pages: 15
...The Printing Press and how it shaped our modern world To center a line in Microsoft Word, select Format | Paragraph from the main toolbar, and then on the Indents and Spacing tab beside the word Alignment choose Center from the drop-down list. Introduction to the Humanities Professor You can insert the date in Microsoft Word by selecting Insert | Date and Time… from the main toolbar and selecting a style. Date 05/14/2011 Prior to 1440 everything read in Europe was copied by hand or copied from wooden blocks carved by hand. This was very expensive and time consuming. The only people who were literate were those of the church and a small percentage of nobility. That all changed with Johanes Gutenber’s creation of the printing press. Johann Gutenberg managed to bring together technologies known for centuries before him, adding the idea for movable metal type. This led to the mass production of books, being them more available to the general public. The invention of the printing press helped ideas spread quickly making things easier for the reform of the Church and the development of modern sciences. "Renaissance" means "rebirth" in French and stands for the cultural, intellectual and economic changes that occurred in Europe from the fourteenth century and lasted through the sixteenth century. However, the Renaissance was not the first rebirth of learning during the Middle Ages since many beautiful cathedrals had previously been built using classical styles: universities...
Words: 2948 - Pages: 12
...The Evolution of International Tourism Trace the course of tourism history from the 18th century Grand Tour to the present day. Discuss and evaluate the importance of broad economic and social developments, e.g. industrialisation, urbanisation, modernisation, in the growth of mass tourism and consider to what extent tourism in the 21st century, with its emphasis on ‘individual experience’, represents a ‘postmodern’ return to the pre-modernity of the Grand Tour. THE EVOLUTION OF INTERTNAIONAL TOURISM With economies growing on a daily basis across the world, an element to every economy, the word tourism receives a growing definition too. This can be interpreted as a leisure activity or a use of leisure time, with the exchange of the ordinary for the extraordinary, such an individual or group seeking this can be identified as tourists (lecture notes). Such interpretations have evolved over time from previous definitions to help represent the concept as successfully as it can. I will trace the course of tourism history from the 18th century Grand Tour to the present day. Discussing and evaluating the importance of broad economic and social developments, e.g. industrialisation, urbanisation, modernisation, in the growth of mass tourism and considering to what extent tourism in the 21st century, with its emphasis on ‘individual experience’, representing a ‘postmodern’ return to the pre-modernity of the Grand Tour with understanding of the historical and chronological evolution...
Words: 3169 - Pages: 13
