"The Merchant Of Venice" - A Fairy Tale

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how although "The Merchant Of Venice" can be considered comic, Harley Granville-Barker claims that the play is a fairy tale because it has a lack of realism. The paper attempts to develop Granville-Barker's claim and extend it by using Vladimir Propp's theory in his "Morphology of the Folktale". It shows how Shakespeare portrays a very complex social condition of the community he lives in by using the fairy tale genre and how the refusal of the society to accept the other is conveyed through the character of Shylock, whose behavior varies according to the situation he is in. Sometimes he is portrayed as evil and sometimes as good.

From the Paper:

"In this book Propp discusses the structure of the fairy tale and defines some of features common to all known fairy tales. Propp reveals thirty one functions which pertain to a fairy tale text. Moreover, Propp claims that it is not obligatory for all the thirty one functions to be in each fairy tale, but the order of these functions remains the same in each of them:" As for grouping, it is necessary to say first of all that by no means do all fairy tales give evidence of all functions. But this in no way changes the law of sequence. The absence of certain functions does not change the order of the rest. "(22). The Merchant of Venice has some of the functions that are defined in the Morphology of The Folktale, and it is the order of those functions in the plot that leads to the conclusion that the play is a fairy tale. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Auden, W,H. Brothers and Others The Dyers Hand and Other Essays Ed Wheeler Thomas. New York: Random House, (1956): 218-235.
• Granville-Barker, Harley. Preface to Shakespeare Prefaces to Shakespeare. Vol. 1. New Jersey: Princeton UP, (1952):335-364.
• Levin, Richard. Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, And Two Alternate Approaches to Shakespearean Comedy. English Studies 1978(59):336-343.
• Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of The Folktale. Ed Louis A. Wagner. Trans. Scott Laurence. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas P, 2000. 378.
• Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed Mahood M. M. New York: Cambridge UP, (1987): 55-166.

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