Precarious Figurations

Zeno Ackermann; Sabine Schülting

Published by De Gruyter 2019

Precarious Figurations

Shylock on the German Stage, 1920–2010

Zeno Ackermann and Sabine Schülting

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617924

Overview
Contents

About this book

Precarious Figurations focuses on the reception of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Germany. Looking at theatrical practices and critical or scholarly discourses from the Weimar Republic to the new millennium, the book explores why the play has served simultaneously as a vehicle for the actualization of anti-Semitic tropes and as a staging ground for the critical exposure of the very logic of anti-Semitism. In particular, the study investigates how the figure of Shylock has come to be both a device in and a stumbling block for attempts to bridge the fundamental rupture in civilization brought about by the Holocaust. The careful analysis of the German reception of Merchant, and in particular of the ways of doing and reading Shylock in the context of painful German, and German-Jewish, discourses of identity and remembrance, is designed to raise fundamental questions – questions concerning not only the staging of Jewishness, the tenacity of anti-Semitism and the difficulties of Holocaust remembrance, but also the general potentials and limitations of theatrical interventions into cultural conflicts.

Author information

Zeno Ackermann, Julius-Maximilian-Universität, Würzburg, Germany; Sabine Schülting, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Figuring Identity: Ruptures and Continuities from the Reinhardt Era to the Early Federal Republic (1905–1957) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
2. Staging Remembrance: Refigurations on the West German Stage (1960–1990) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
3. Inheriting a Classic: Configurations of Merchant in the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
4. After Remembrance? – Shylock in the Reunified Germany (1990–2010) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
5. “Forced Companionability”: Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Stage Productions of The Merchant of Venice in Germany and Austria (1933–2010) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	228
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	238

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars of Shakespeare Studies, German, Literary and Jewish Studies, Libraries, Institutes
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 246
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 10
Keywords: Shakespeare; Shylock; Germany; anti-Semitism

eBook

Published: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 9783110617924

Hardcover

Published: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 9783110615531

Paperback

Published: December 7, 2020
ISBN: 9783110736496