Essays about: "The Merchant of Venice"

Found 1 essay containing the words The Merchant of Venice.

  1. 1. “When shall we laugh?”: Gratiano and the two faces of comedy in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

    University essay from Stockholms universitet/Engelska institutionen

    Author : Jakob Lindner; [2019]
    Keywords : Shakespeare; The Merchant of Venice; Freud; Bakhtin; comedy; relief theory;

    Abstract : Comedy is an inherently pleasurable phenomenon with beneficial psychological functions, but its potential to bring on undesirable and socially destabilizing consequences is less intuitively obvious. In this essay, I argue that one of the hitherto under-recognized features of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is its covert problematization of the phenomenon of comedy itself, and that the play invites its audience to become more aware of in what situations laughter is constructive and appropriate. READ MORE