"Now by My Hood, a Gentle and No Jew": Jessica, The Merchant of Venice, and the Discourse of Early Modern English Identity

Recent readings of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which have been concerned primarily with the play's representation of difference, especially that of gender, religion, or race, often leave Jessica out of their analyses. Yet Jessica, as both a Jew and a willing Christian convert, en...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Vol. 113; no. 1; pp. 52 - 63
Main Author Metzger, Mary Janell
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, etc Modern Language Association of America 01.01.1998
Cambridge University Press
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Summary:Recent readings of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which have been concerned primarily with the play's representation of difference, especially that of gender, religion, or race, often leave Jessica out of their analyses. Yet Jessica, as both a Jew and a willing Christian convert, enables the play to resolve the problem posed by the equations of white Christianity and national identity in the emerging discourse of English imperialism: how to render the Jew's difference as a difference of nature and as a difference of faith involving the act of will implicit in Christian baptism? Only by taking Shylock's measure in the light of the gender, racial, and religious ideologies that integrate his daughter into Venetian society can we account for the play's early modern representations of racialized Jews and of the Christians who imagined them.
ISSN:0030-8129
1938-1530
DOI:10.2307/463408