Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern CultureIn the essay on pp. 40-58, "Marlowe, Marx, and Anti-Semitism, " proposes a comparative reading of Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta" and Marx's essay "On the Jewish Question." Both works use the stereotype of the perfidious Jew, showing a link between the Renaissance and modern thought. The Jew, linked in the popular imagination with usury or cunning, is depicted by these writers as paradoxically alien and a distilled representative of a society obsessed with the power of money. This contrasts with Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice, " which presents the Jew as an outsider. Argues that Marlowe has a buried identification with the Jewish protagonist Barabas (e.g. both scorn society and have no hope for its future). Marx, however, maintained hope for a better society. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
MARLOWE MARX AND ANTISEMITISM | 40 |
FILTHY RITES | 59 |
Copyright | |
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Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture Stephen Jay Greenblatt,Stephen Greenblatt No preview available - 1990 |
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aesthetic Albrecht Dürer alien anxiety argue Arnaud du Tilh Artegall artifacts artist attempt Barabas Book boundaries Caliban called capitalism celebration Christian comic commemoration conception cultural daughter difference discourse distinction Dürer's design effect England English essay European excrement Faerie Queene fantasy father festive Gargantua and Pantagruel genre grotesque body Hakluyt hence historicism human identity ideological Indians Jew of Malta Jewish King Lear language Lear's linked literary criticism London Luther Marlowe Marlowe's Martin Guerre Marx Marx's Marxist monument museum narrative Natalie Zemon Davis Ne'wekwe objects once play pleasure political possession poststructuralism practice precisely Prospero psychoanalysis Quoted Rabelais Rabelais's radical rebellious peasants rebels religious Renaissance representation represented resonance rhetorical ritual scatological scatology seems sense Shakespeare's Sidney Sidney's sixteenth century social society speech Spenser stories strategy suggests sword symbolic texts textual theater tion trans understand University Press values victory vols Wayland wonder words writes York Zuñi