Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Writtey by Lillian Lim, member of Team The Venetian Project

 1. Shakespeare, William. “Full text- script of the play Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.” Feb 10 2009 http://www.william-shakespeare.info/script-text-merchant-of-venice.htm

This is a free and public website that offers an online textual database of Shakespeare’s works. One can find an index of works ranging from poetry to plays, all of which consists of its own link, leading the site browser to different aspects and elements of what each work encompasses. Each play consists of hyperlinks that provide further information about character and cast while addressing significant themes and symbols. Within every play, each act is separated into its own web page and it consists of the character dialogues that transpire within each scene. The website includes a timeline of dates illustrating when each Shakespeare play was published, offering a visual display of time-relation between all of his writings. The site also includes a biography of Shakespeare’s life, offering individuals who may be unaware of his history, an introductory background. Facts, quizzes, and quotes are offered to those who are interested in learning further details or who wish to test the knowledge they have thus far.

2. Shakespeare, William. Merchant of Venice. New York , New York . Penguin Group, 1999.

This is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare and published by the Penguin Group. This is a play that features a layering of relationships between each character, where symbols and actions are wielded to further textual thought and analysis. This play is believed to have been written between 1594 and 1596, where its themes of religion, filial piety, and currency (money) address the issues of self-interest, love, hatred, and mercy. Unlike many of Shakespeare’s other plays, The Merchant of Venice, places a woman in an authoritative role and is one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays. This published edition includes notes about Shakespeare’s life, his writing pieces, and historical information about the time period, in addition to commentaries on the play itself.

3. O’Rourke, James. Racism and Homophobia in the Merchant of Venice. ELH 70, no. 2 (summer 2003): 375-97. Feb 10 2009

This article addresses themes of racism and homophobia within Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice play. The writer argues that the understanding and issues of racial and sexual stereotypes cannot be understood within modern context, and rather speaks uniquely to the Elizabethan culture. The article makes a point to address how xenophobia ostracized Christians and Jewish alike and how religion plays an elemental role within Shakespeare’s play. Providing statistical and factual evidence extracted from further researches of the like, this article delves into the dialogue, connoted tones, and expressions between all the characters and offers a different reading and interpretation of the relationships between each character.

4. William O. Scott. Conditional Bonds, Forfeitures, and Vows in The Merchant of Venice . English Literary Renaissance, Volume 34, Number 3 (November 2004), pp. 286-305 Feb 10 2009

This is an article written by William O. Scott that analyzes the meaning of conditional bonds, forfeitures, and vows in The Merchant of Venice. The beginning stages of the article provides an excerpt of the play that includes the agreement that Antonio signed for Shylock. The article explains how the formality and distinctions of contracts, their requirements, and their guild lines through, out the entirety of the play, are often times either poorly misunderstood or are often times broken. A word for word, line for line, analysis of the agreement, along with additional research on the topics of money-lending, offer an additional take toward understanding what The Merchant of Venice in its entirety is about. 

5. Steinbock, Daniel. “Tag Crowd Beta” 2006. TagCrowd. Feb 10 2009

    http://tagcrowd.com

This is an online application that offers a strict feature that can analyze any piece of text, which may range from short to lengthy, and generate a “word cloud” made of word frequencies. A “word cloud” is a visualization that displays the most frequent words used in a specific text and places them randomly together to create a singular mass of words. The frequency number of each word can be displayed next to the word itself, and this enables an individual to quickly and accurately count the number of times a certain word appears within a piece of writing. This website offers both a URL option and a plain text option, so that individuals have a means of uploading from two different types of sources. While this program is a tool that recognizes patterns, it offers a different element of approach towards textual analysis and literary interpretation.