Fatherhood, Religion and Mercantilism in Howard Jacobson’s "Shylock Is My Name" and Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice"

Details

Supervisors

Latre, Guido

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques

Abstract

The year 2016 commemorated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. For this occasion, Hogarth, a publishing house inspired by the plans of Woolf’s Hogarth Press, decided to launch a new program in October 2015. This project aims to breathe new life into the masterpieces of Shakespeare. Famous authors, such as Margaret Atwood and Jo Nesbø, accepted to take up the challenge of retelling their favourite play. One of these novelists is Howard Jacobson (1942-), an English journalist and writer. He chose to rewrite "The Merchant of Venice" (1596-1597), the Bard’s most controversial piece of work. "Shylock Is My Name" (2016) is thus a modern rewriting of this famous play. However, Jacobson preferred to focus on the character of Shylock, rather than on that of Antonio. The author decided to integrate the Jew – without changing any of his traits – into his novel and to add a new one, Strulovitch, Shylock’s present-day counterpart. This new character offers a new perspective and proposes a new interpretation of "The Merchant of Venice". As a consequence, this novel is not only intended as a rewriting, but also as an extension of the original play. Although Jacobson never had the intention of giving Shylock a second chance, he offers the character the opportunity to defend his acts and to express what he could not make clear in the original play. The emphasis is thus placed on the humanity of Shylock, who is not only represented as a Jew but also as a father and as a human being. In order to limit the scope of this study, I decided to focus on one main research question: “How did Jacobson portray Shylock in his modern rewriting of "The Merchant of Venice"?”. Given the extent of this question, I selected a few essential themes. The original play and the modern rewriting have thus been analysed through three interrelated aspects: religion, fatherhood and mercantilism. This dissertation attempts to show, by means of different perspectives (theories, analyses and interpretations), that Jacobson blurred the lines and brought balance to the characters of "The Merchant of Venice" by focusing on the humanity of Shylock and by idealising neither the Christian, nor the Jewish characters in "Shylock Is My Name".