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English Language and Literature
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee
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How Not To Read Literature: The Nazis’ Appropriation Of The Merchant Of Venice, William W. White
How Not To Read Literature: The Nazis’ Appropriation Of The Merchant Of Venice, William W. White
Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee
In his essay “Reading Law, Reading Literature: Law as Language,” legal scholar James Boyd White extols the interpretive flexibility of literary and legal texts and warns against viewing literature as having “objective and determinate meanings.” White’s warning raises the question of whether a literary work's meaning can be used to promote a morally corrupt agenda. This paper seeks to explore the danger of reducing a work of literature's meaning to a determinate claim by focusing on how Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was utilized by the Nazis as anti-Semitic political propaganda. Shakespeare’s play experienced a massive surge in popularity during …