INDIAN BEAUTY AND FOREIGN SPIRITS: THE GOLDEN CASKET IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
INDIAN BEAUTY AND FOREIGN SPIRITS: THE GOLDEN CASKET IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Author(s): Clayton MacKenzieSubject(s): Semiotics / Semiology, Studies of Literature, Semantics
Published by: Akadémiai Kiadó
Keywords: Shakespeare; caskets; iconography; gold; fortune; Bassanio; Morocco; Portia;
Summary/Abstract: The casket scenes in The Merchant of Venice are powerful arbiters of success and failure. The casket challenge is loaded with culturally-specific signifiers which favour local contenders. Bassanio rejects the gold casket because he is aware that European moral iconographies repudiate earthly wealth (though, ironically, Bassanio is a poor illustration of the principle). The Prince of Morocco, by contrast, understandably supposes gold to be an appropriate metaphor for love – gold was, after all, the prima materia of North Africa. Morocco is on every level more worthy than Bassanio but fails because he chooses through foreign eyes.
Journal: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
- Issue Year: 68/2015
- Issue No: 4
- Page Range: 467-474
- Page Count: 8
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF