A Fury in the Words : Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare's Venice / Harry Berger.
Berger, Harry, author.
2022
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Title A Fury in the Words : Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare's Venice / Harry Berger.
Author Berger, Harry, author.
ISBN 9780823290765
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823290765
Published New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2022]
Copyright ©2013
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (240 p.)
Item Number 10.1515/9780823290765 doi
Summary Shakespeare's two Venetian plays are dominated by the discourse of embarrassment. The Merchant of Venice is a comedy of embarrassment, and Othello is a tragedy of embarrassment. This nomenclature is admittedly anachronistic, because the term "embarrassment" didn't enter the language until the late seventeenth century. To embarrass is to make someone feel awkward or uncomfortable, humiliated or ashamed. Such feelings may respond to specific acts of criticism, blame, or accusation. "To embarrass" is literally to "embar": to put up a barrier or deny access. The bar of embarrassment may be raised by unpleasant experiences. It may also be raised when people are denied access to things, persons, and states of being they desire or to which they feel entitled. The Venetian plays represent embarrassment not merely as a condition but as a weapon and as the wound the weapon inflicts. Characters in The Merchant of Venice and Othello devote their energies to embarrassing one another. But even when the weapon is sheathed, it makes its presence felt, as when Desdemona means to praise Othello and express her love for him: "I saw Othello's visage in his mind" (1.3.253). This suggests, among other things, that she didn't see it in his face.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
In Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
Fordham University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780823241958
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Language as Gesture
Part One. Mercifixion in The Merchant of Venice: The Riches of Embarrassment
Introduction
1. Negotiating the Bond
2. Antonio's Blues
3. Curiositas: The Two Sallies
4. Negative Usury and the Arts of Embarrassment
5. Negative Usury: Portia's Ring Trick
6. Portia the Embarrasser
7. The Archery of Embarrassment
8. The First Jason
9. A Note on Verse and Prose in Act I
10. Another Jason
11. Portia Cheating
12. Portia's Hair
13. The Siege of Belmont 13. The Siege of Belmont
14. Covinous Casketeers
15. Moonlit Maundering
16. Coigns of Vantage
17. Standing for Judgment
18. Standing for Sacrifice
19. "Here is the money": Bassanio in the Bond Market
20. Twilight in Belmont: Portia's Ring Cycle
21. Death in Venice
Part Two. Three's Company: Contaminated Intimacy in Othello
22. Prehistory in Othello
23. Othello's Embarrassment in 1.2 and 1.3
24. Desdemona on Cyprus: Act 2 Scene 1
25. The Proclamation Scenes: Act 2 Scenes 2 and 3
26. Dark Triangles in 3.3
27. Desdemona's Greedy Ear
28. Impertinent Trifling: Desdemona's Handkerchief
29. On the Emilian Trail
30. Iago's Soliloquies
31. Othello's Infidelity
32. The Fury in Their Words

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