Saturday, January 19, 2008

Sharon Meltzer: "Genre, Culture & the Moment"

Sharon B. Meltzer, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Richard J. Daley College

Genre, Culture, and the Moment of The Merchant

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very absorbing and cogent analysis of the complexities of a changing society, its prejudices and family dynamics.

Anonymous said...

An inciteful, beautifully written reading of 'Merchant' which presented to this reader a new way to relate what Meltzer calls Shylock's 'inwardness' and the "conservative" but evolving mercantile world whose hypocritical mores he futilely strove to navigate.

Anonymous said...

This is a gracefully written, informed, and, I think, important contextualization of the play's thematic material; it also serves to deepen our appreciation of its "intense drama." I would love to see more by Meltzer on the intriguing relationships between "Merchant" and "Lear."

Andrew Hallam said...

This is a very interesting and provocative paper. You've talked about how architectural space is transformed into literary space, both of which were used to negotiate for greater prestige in the Elizabethan/Jacobian cultural milieu. How do you think this same logic can be applied to theater as a literary and architectural space constantly struggling for prestige in culture that at times hotly debated its worth? How did, for example, Shakespeare's use of language to address the limitations and advantages of the stage and theater building as an effective and potentially prestigious forum for public discourse?