Money & Debts on The Merchant of Venice
18 April 14h – 15h30 Room C250
Host: Professor Miguel Ramalhete Gomes
Speaker: Professor Priscila Matsunaga (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)
School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon
In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, tragedy is disguised as comedy: money, debts and business are constant elements. The play provokes different reactions when it deals with anti-Semitism issues through the character of Shylock, the Jew. The usurer charges a pound of flesh as a fine for a debt acquired by Antonio the Merchant. In this seminar, the characters’ relationships will be addressed based on the economic anthropology of David Graeber and the system of economic-symbolic values present in the play. What, after all, is at stake when the payment of a debt is not made with currency, but with flesh?