The Merchant of Venice: Language and Writing

Shakespeare's engagement with anti-Semitic tradition is a notoriously disturbing feature of The Merchant of Venice - in this volume, Douglas Lanier carefully shows how students can productively analyse this language for themselves. The guide also shows how to unpick the play's challenging linguistic nexus of money, so that students can understand how economic ways of speaking and thinking drive the characters' actions and emotions. Each chapter's "Writing Matters" section gives ideas and guidance for building a critical response to the play, while the final chapter leads students through effective strategies for essay construction.