Medea and The Merchant of Venice

In the early modern period, Medea functioned as a microcosm of anxiety about the role of women in the educational process: figured as the frightening mother that schoolboys were invited to abandon in the schoolroom, she also was used there as a rhetorical model. This essay argues that The Merchant o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in English literature, 1500-1900 1500-1900, 2020-06, Vol.60 (2), p.323-345
Main Author: Hutcheon, Elizabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
British & Irish literature
Children & youth
Classical literature
Classrooms
Drama
Early modern period
English literature
Gender differences
Humanism
Latin literature
Murders & murder attempts
Negotiation
Ovid (43 BC-17 AD)
Pedagogy
Plot (Narrative)
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Traditions
Witchcraft
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Summary:In the early modern period, Medea functioned as a microcosm of anxiety about the role of women in the educational process: figured as the frightening mother that schoolboys were invited to abandon in the schoolroom, she also was used there as a rhetorical model. This essay argues that The Merchant of Venice—a play that has more references to the Medea story than any other by Shakespeare—negotiates this apparent contradiction. By providing his marginalized characters with rhetorical prowess, Shakespeare both invests them with power—clearly evident in Portia—and mitigates their threat by rendering it intelligible, as with Shylock.
ISSN:0039-3657
1522-9270
1522-9270
DOI:10.1353/sel.2020.0014