The Merchant of Venice as a Lens for Analyzing the Religious and Cultural Attitudes of Early Modern Venice

This study explores the intersection of historical events and literary representations concerning persecution of religious minorities in sixteenth-century Venice. It focuses on the Venetian approach to its Jewish inhabitants—the establishment of the Ghetto in 1516, the Inquisition, and Italian views towards Judaism. It evaluates how these events as well as the attitudes associated with them travelled to the rest of Europe and to Elizabethan England, where Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice. The study will begin with an historical analysis of the events and prevailing sentiments surrounding Jewish-Christian relations in Venice, and continues with a literary analysis of Merchant of Venice within its historical context in England, employing a New Historicist theoretical approach. It aims to draw connections between the duality of both the Jewish experience in Venice and of its representation in Shakespeare’s work.