In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
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Francesca Vitali,
Francesca Vitali is a Ph.D. student in English Studies at the University of Verona. Her research fields include Renaissance literature, Contemporary Literature, Law and Literature, Science and Literature, Law, Religion and Literature. She is a member of the following associations: AIDEL (Associazione Italiana Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English).
Abstract
The concept of identity corresponds to the combination of social awareness (self) and social identity (persona), whose meaning changes according to the disciplinary context in which it is studied. Accordingly, the law's role is to create boundaries in order to delineate people's legal identity. Moreover, legal identity is strictly linked to the concept of citizenship; therefore, being a legal citizen is an indispensable requirement for the possession of human rights. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that in The Jew of Malta Barabas's struggle for his wealth (which in truth allows him to exercise part of his rights through the act of buying and owning, and partake in society) and his attempt to twist the law against his opponents actually symbolize a struggle for the recognition of his legal identity. Only the law, in fact, has the capacity to delineate his real identity, i.e. that of a human being, an identity for which he will sacrifice everything in the end.
About the author
Francesca Vitali is a Ph.D. student in English Studies at the University of Verona. Her research fields include Renaissance literature, Contemporary Literature, Law and Literature, Science and Literature, Law, Religion and Literature. She is a member of the following associations: AIDEL (Associazione Italiana Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Identity
- In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
- A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
- Women's Legal Identity in the Context of Gothic Effacement: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
- Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch
- “Are you alive?” Issues in Self-awareness and Personhood of Organic Artificial Intelligence
- Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
- Law and Literature: Jewish and Christian models
- The Vitality of Emotional Background Knowledge in Court
- Corpus delicti: The evidence of the body as body of evidence in Thomas Hobbes's political imagination
- Book Reviews
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Identity
- In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
- A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
- Women's Legal Identity in the Context of Gothic Effacement: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
- Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch
- “Are you alive?” Issues in Self-awareness and Personhood of Organic Artificial Intelligence
- Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
- Law and Literature: Jewish and Christian models
- The Vitality of Emotional Background Knowledge in Court
- Corpus delicti: The evidence of the body as body of evidence in Thomas Hobbes's political imagination
- Book Reviews
