『베니스의 상인』에 나타난 ‘개종’의 문제: 제시카를 중심으로

초록

While focusing on Jessica and her conversion, this essay purports to investigate the ways in which Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is engaged in the early modern discourse on nation and race. Even though she is not as prominent as Shylock or Portia, Jessica seems to be the central character in understanding the relevance of the Jews in the formation of early modern national identity. My discussions of Jessica is expected to cast light on the ways in which early modern Europeans grappled with competing notions of religion, race and gender under the name of nation. What Jessica and her conversion remind us is that early modern nationhood must be read in connection with religion, race, and gender. By taking up Jessica as a primary figure of conversion, I suggest that the racial, theological, national tensions of early modern England come together in her escapade and marriage. Jessica's resistance to the patriarchal law drives wedge into the early modern notion of nation and national identity based upon blood and genealogy. Shakespeare's representation of Jessica's conversion through elopement and marriage, I argue, at once suppresses and reveals the cultural anxiety about the political economy of early modern English nationhood. With the Venetian investment in converting the Jews, both Shylock and Jessica, Shakespeare's play rehearses the guilt-ridden relation of Christianity to Judaism that might have dominated the psyche of early modern Europeans.

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