Reading Shakespeare in Jewish Theological Frameworks: Shylock Beyond the Holocaust uses Jewish theology to mount a courageous new reading of a four-hundred-year-old play, The Merchant of Venice. While victimhood and antisemitism have been the understandable focus of the Merchant critical history for decades, Lion urges scholars, performers, and readers to see beyond the racism in Shakespeare's plays by recovering Shakespearean themes of potentiality and human flourishing as they emerge within the Jewish tradition itself. Lion joins the race conversation in Shakespeare studies today by drawing on the intellectual history and oppression of the Jewish people, borrowing from thinkers Franz Rosenzweig and Abraham Joshua Heschel as well as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and rabbis from the Talmud to today. This volume interweaves post-confessional, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and mystical ideas with Shakespeare's poetry and opens conversations of prophecy, love, spirituality, care, and community. It concludes with brief critical sketches of Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and Macbeth to demonstrate that Shakespeare when interpreted through Jewish theological frameworks can point to post-credal solutions and transformed societal paradigms of repair that encourage action and the shaping of a finer world.
Author(s): Caroline Wiesenthal Lion
Series: Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 244
City: New York
Cover
Endorsement
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
A Note On Shakespeare References
A Note On the Transliteration of Hebrew Words
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Opening Thoughts, May 2022
Foreword
Introduction: Antisemitism and Epiphany
The Limits of Victimhood
Hannah Arendt and Potentiality
Jewish Thought: A Quick Overview
From Victimhood to Agency
Notes
1 Shylock: The Imprint of the Path
Shylock’s Epiphany
Tracking Shylock: Before the Flight of Jessica
Tracking Shylock: After the Flight of Jessica
Notes
2 Lorenzo: Braving the ‘Perhaps’
Lorenzo’s Epiphany and His Desperation
Tracking Lorenzo: His Spiritual Goal
Lorenzo’s Speech Within the Plot
Lorenzo’s Speech and Epiphany: The Aspiring Mystic
Conclusion
Notes
3 Antonio: The Imprint of the Path
Antonio’s Epiphany and Jewish Mysticism
Tracking Antonio: From Passivity to the Epiphany
........ ,... ............. ......., ....-....... ........ .........
Antonio’s Repression and Transformation
Antonio’s Love for Bassanio
Conclusion
Notes
4 Portia: Love Or Pretense
Portia: Her Fantastical Powers
Tracking Portia: The Invisible Suitors
Morocco
Arragon
Bassanio
Notes
5 Jessica: The Courage of the ‘Gift’
Jessica’s Courage and Epiphany
Tracking Jessica: From Exile to Epiphany
Conclusion
Notes
Conclusion: The Trial and the Rings
Key Concepts and Ideas
The Trial as Nerve-Center
The Rings
Notes
Further Thoughts: Jewish Theological Frameworks Beyond Shylock
Antony and Cleopatra
Hamlet
Macbeth
Jewish Theological Frameworks: Beyond Shylock
Notes
Bibliography
Index
