「베니스의 상인」: 전통적 가치의 변화

Abstract

The Change of Traditional Values Between Human Relations in The Merchant of Venice Abstract Hyochun Park The purpose of this paper is to analyze the traditional values such as friendship, love, and filial duty in human relationship. The result of this study is that the writer infers that these factors have been changed with the times. For achieving the aim, the study has mainly focused on the excessive generosity of Antonio who is the magnanimous businessman called the merchant of Venice. Even though his devoted friendship toward Basssnio is a little bit beyond our commonsense, it was a commonplace in Elizabethan eyes. Nonetheless there were two debatable elements in his friendship to Bassanio. First of all, his excessive friendship may be regarded as a homosexuality to Bassanio. Because we could find some examples of this kind of friendship between Shakespeare’s characters in his plays, we can characterize the matter as an understandable case. Second, it is a possibility of danger of idolatry. Idol worship is forbidden in the Bible. The Bible says people should not love any creature more than the Creator. In connection with that, Antonio’s devotion toward Bassanio reminds the warning of the Holy Scripture. But this is an obvious fact that Shakespeare did not aim to give an instance of idolatry through Antonio’s sacrificial friendship. It would be appropriate that he’d rather contrast a difference between Antonio’s big love and Bassnio’s smaller one for suggesting a new paradigm of the ideal friendship in The Merchant of Venice. It also implies that it is getting harder and harder to keep the traditional values such as friendship, love, and filial duty relating to human relationship in modern capitalistic society like barren, heartless, mammonism city called Venice.