Shylock is Shakespeare
By: Kenneth Gross.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 202
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Characters -- Shylock; Shylock (Fictitious character)
Description: "Speculative and articulate, Gross's book sees Shylock as a breakthrough for Shakespeare, an early realization of the Bard's power to create dramatic voices that speak for unconscious, even inhuman impulses - characters larger than the plays that contain them. Shylock is a figure who gains strength from those who hate him. He supplies a mask for Shakespeare's own need, rage, vulnerability, generosity, and ambition, as well as his anxious bond with his audience, even as he is a character ready to escape the author's control. In envisioning Shylock as Shakespeare's covert double, Gross probes the character's peculiar isolation, ambivalence, opacity, and dark humor.

Shylock's complex afterlife is one measure of his power, and Gross also explores his transformations in the work of such writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Heinrich Heine, and Philip Roth, as well as his uncanny way of mirroring the ambiguous nature of Jewishness in modernity."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.   ) and index.