In addition, the protagonists are not exactly nice, either. As stated, the protagonists were previously mean and evil to him. When Shylock seeks to claim his legal right to a pound of Antonio's flesh (the penalty for defaulting on his loan, taken out earlier in the play), he is defeated by an untrained woman masquerading as a lawyer. She cites a loophole, making it impossible for Shylock to collect on what he is owed, then, adding injury to insult, she puts Shylock on trial for endangering Antonio's life! The end result is that Shylock is stripped of half his property, and forced to convert to Christianity. This punishment is very harsh for the "crime"--merely Shylock trying to claim his legal rights.
To me, this elimination of the "Good Guys" and the righteousness of the "Bad Guys" feels very much like Deconstructionsim, which, as Derrida developed it, seeks to invert power relationships--for example, the relationship between, say, an artist and a critic (although traditionally the artist is more important and more powerful, several critics have successfully argued that the critic is more important than the artist). I'm thinking it would be interesting to examine The Merchant of Venice through this lens, to show how Shakespeare, centuries before Derrida, was "deconstructing" things; it would also be interesting to examine his motivations for doing so.
I have a lot more to say about this, but I'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say, I see some potential here, as well as some big problems. I shared the idea with my roommate, and though I'm pretty sure he only had a very basic idea of what I was talking about, he said it might work well. What do you guys think? If I can find sources, does this sound like it might fulfill the requirements and be interesting?
I think it depends on the angle you take with it. Actually, seeing instances of deconstruction isn't too uncommon in early modern texts. I'm taking an early modern women writers class, and every single one of the women we've read deconstructs the Adam and Eve story in a way that gives Eve (and thus women) superiority to Adam (and thus men).
ReplyDeleteBasically, I wouldn't try to assert that Shakespeare was a major innovator with this strategy--try toeing the waters and see what other people have to say about Merchant as a deconstructing piece.
You could use Nyssa's comment to add complexity to your argument, although what I'm thinking of might be too broad for this paper. It kind of sounds like that Nyssa's mention of early writers using deconstruction is the qualifying part of your argument, like maybe you could argue that Shakespeare does it differently, or achieves something different with deconstruction.
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