The Merchant of Venice's seemingly disconnected and interweaving plots contribute to the difficulty of assessing its characters and genre. The comic-tragic ambiguity of the character of Shylock only deepens this ambiguity. There is a precedent in the literature for looking to Aristotle and the Poetics to inform the study of the Shakespeare canon, but few have attempted to understand MV in terms of the taxonomy of ancient classical poetics. I attempt to do this, and find this approach very fruitful for addressing some of the problematic characteristics of the play, especially with regard to plot and character. Specifically, I find that the disunified plot simulates the 'fog' of indecision that surrounds making choices under the constraints of time and limited information, and that the structure of the play places the audience in the position of experiencing how the relatively fixed goals of the characters shift and become distorted as they encounter new and dissonant information. / Les intrigues entremelees et sans lien apparent du Marchant de Venise contribuent a rendre la caracterisation de la piece difficile, tant selon le genre que la structure. L'ambiguite du personnage de Shylock, entre comique et tragique, ne fait que renforcer cette incertitude. Certains se sont deja tournes vers Aristote et la Poetique pour construire leur etude litteraire du cannon shakesperien, mais jusqu'ici rares sont ceux qui ont tente de comprendre specifiquement Le MV en s'appuyant sur la taxinomie de la poetique classique ancienne. J'essaie de faire cela, et cette approche me semble enrichir la comprehension de certaines des caracteristiques problematiques de la piece, surtout en ce qui concerne le concept d'intrigue et celui de personnage. En particulier, l'intrigue multiple me semble simuler le "brouillard" d'indecision qui entoure les choix sous contraintes de temps et d'information limitee, et la structure de la piece me semble ainsi permettre a l'audience d'experimenter comment les buts relativement fixes des personnages se deplacent et se transforment, tandis qu'ils font face a des informations nouvelles et dissonantes, a travers une rapide succession de retournements de situation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.97197 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Rotenberg, Nitzan |
| Contributors | Paul Edward Yachnin (Internal/Supervisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | Electronically-submitted theses. |
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