| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

"Superseding Literary Barriers" by Kristina Moore

Page history last edited by Kristina Moore 15 years ago

 

 

"Superseding Literary Barriers: A Look at The Merchant of Venice from a New Perspective"

 

 By Kristina Moore,  The Venetian Project

 

The Venetian Project at U.C.S.B. is an excellent resource in aiding to the understanding of the work by William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. The Venetian Project is a website that has been made for the purpose of analyzing the play in depth. However, the way in which the material was analyzed is much different then the classic analytical approaches that the work usually is studied. The process that many of Shakespeare’s plays go through is that of close reading. The Oxford English Dictionary defines close reading as, “critical and detailed analysis of a text.” Throughout history people have tried to derive meaning from the same passages. The Venetian Project offers a new approach for studying literature, where instead of the work being reviewed through close reading the work is instead put through a series of text analysis tools to infer meaning through the words from the text. This approach offers a fresh take on a long studied work. The Venetian Project can offer further understanding and incredible insights into The Merchant of Venice, by using text tools analysis.

The Venetian Project utilizes three different text analysis tools in order to draw meaningful information to make insightful analysis about specific characters and their relationships in the play. These tools are each meant to enrich the understanding of the work and to provide analysis that is both original and data driven. The reason that The Merchant of Venice was the work chosen for the project to analyze was because it is relatively short play and the text could be separated into dialogue spoken purely by the particular character being analyzed. Therefore, there was no narrator voice to influence the meaning of each character’s speech.

The Merchant of Venice, written by William Shakespeare between the years of 1594 and 1596 is a work that is very much concerned with relationships and the different exchanges that occurred between these relationships. The plot is centered on a debt that a man named Antonio has made to a Jewish moneylender, named Shylock. Shylock lends Antonio money in exchange for Antonio’s pledge of a pound of his own flesh in the event that the debt is not repaid. It is in this exchange that the plot unfolds because when Antonio appears to not be able to repay the debt, Shylock vengefully demands Antonio’s flesh. This vengeance comes from a life of persecution as a Jew. He has been mistreated by Antonio and other Christians for his whole life and when observing his speech one can tell that his thoughts are constantly centered on his persecution and then in effect Shylock’s own persecution of others. The play also holds many other relationships of different types that are apparent when reading the play, but amplified by the work of The Venetian Project.

When first reading The Merchant of Venice, one may recognize the relationships between the more prominent characters like: Bassanio and Portia, or Bassanio and Antonio. However, many other of the important character relationships are overlooked due to the fact that their dialogue is spread out among the play and meaningful information may be harder to infer because they speak to a variety of characters at different times. This is just one area in which The Venetian Project can enhance the understanding of this work. This project helps one to see visually the relationships and interactions that each character has with each other character. The way in which these relationships are best explored and demonstrated is through using the text analysis tool, PieSpy.  This tool can generate character interaction maps through inputting character dialogues into the PieSpy program. The tool creates the character interaction map through separating the character’s interactions with one another apparent in their dialogue. The amount of times in which the characters interacted, in other words, the amount of time in which the characters addressed one another, is the deciding factor in how light or dark the lines between each character would be on the character interaction map. PieSpy then provided scene snap shots of each character interactions for that scene. Providing that the data is imputed for each scene, scene by scene, the tool can generate snap shots of the entire play, therefore showing the character interaction maps for the entire play. This is something that The Venetian Project demonstrates for the play to show the depth of each character’s relationships to others.

These maps proved very useful because it examines the play in a way that shows all the characters, scene by scene. In many of the analyses done throughout history on this play there has not been insightful data on more than a few relationships in this play. This provides a visual way to see and then as a result interpret the meaning of the many different relationships that exist and develop throughout the play. An example of the usefulness of the maps in understanding character relationships throughout the play is analyzing Shylock’s daughter, Jessica’s relationships and progression throughout the play. Jessica, being the daughter of Shylock, is a Jew however she runs away to be with the Christian, Lorenzo. Reading the play gives a sense of Jessica’s relationships with her father and Lorenzo, however there seem to be only a few instances where her dialogue is meaningful enough to infer the strength of them. This is where the maps have excellent insight into her character and relationships. She first appears in Act I, Scene V, and from her interactions PieSpy displays on the map for that scene that she is connected to Shylock by a line that is faint, but still darker than that of the line connecting her to Lorenzo. As the scenes progress there is a lightening of the line connecting her to her father, representative of her drift away from him. There is also an apparent darkening of the line that connects her and Lorenzo. Also important to notices is that while Jessica’s connection to her father is lightening, his lines are kept dark between that of his Christian enemies indicating that he is too much concerned with his plight with his rivals and unconcerned with the loss of his daughter in comparison. Eventually Jessica is not longer connected to Shylock, representing the total loss of Jessica to her father. It is also relevant to notice that Jessica, towards the last few scenes begins to have lines connecting her to the other Christians: Portia, Launcelot, and Bassanio, indicating that she has left her father to enter the realm of the Christians and thereby abandoning her faith with her father.

By visually showing the data from the work it allows for the viewer to take a more in depth analysis of the material without doing a close reading. To approach the work from this new perspective relationships are better understood because they may not have been detectable otherwise, or they may have been too subtle to notice. The last example that could demonstrate character relationship derives from character interaction maps displaying Launcelot’s relationships to the different characters in the play allowing further knowledge of Shylock.  Launcelot is Shylock’s servant; however it is apparent through the maps that there is only one instance where Launcelot is linked to Shylock and through a very thin line. The rest of the time Launcelot is connected with his father, Jessica, or Lorenzo. The fact that he is connected to Jessica and Lorenzo a lot of the time is significant because it signifies that he is aiding in the separation of Jessica from her father. Launcelot does explain to his father the want of separation from Shylock as his servant in the play, but through the visual map the extent to which he wishes to be separated is shown through his constant connections to the other Christians and Jessica, showing his support of her fleeing. Through observing the pattern of Launcelot’s relationship line on the character interaction map the viewer can infer that Shylock is so isolated that not even his own servant has a strong relationship with him.

The next text analysis tool that The Venetian Project utilizes in order to make meaningful analysis is called TagCrowd. This tool was one in which the data for each character was inputted separately and then word frequencies were derived from them. Through analyzing the top frequent words for each character and drawing inferences for what the words mean in the context of each character, analyses of the characters were formed. This way of analyzing data is quite different then the tedious task of reviewing passages from the dialogue of characters to form meaning. By relying on the few words that were frequently used by each character it is inferred what the character values and what it was they were concerned with throughout the play. For many characters the data proved to be correct the already perceived notions of the play through what was picked up by reading it. However, there were also words that gave an incredible amount of insight to the character that was not seen previously. Also the fact that each character’s dialogue was put into TagCrowd gave the opportunity for analysis of characters that may have been over looked due to them being seen as minor characters of the play.

The tool Tagcrowd offers a more in depth interpretation of each character. A character that is not in the play for very long may go somewhat unnoticed in the traditional way of analyzing characters. In a Google search for information on the character, the Prince of Arragon, there is really no good analysis of him that concludes anything much different from the analysis of the Prince of Morocco. Both analyses of characters that could be found state that they attempted to win Portia’s hand, but failed and then for Prince of Arragon, it states his arrogance. However, The Venetian Project offers a much fuller analysis of the Prince of Arragon through the analysis of the character’s word frequencies. The analysis comments on how the main word used by him is “chooseth” signifying that he is choosing the casket, also it examines his use of the words “fool” and “deserves” and how these words point to his eminent failure because he believes he deserves Portia, like a fool due to his arrogance, which is something that his name alludes to. The use of the word analysis in the character of Arragon and many of the other characters show that it can derive a lot of very useful information that leads to a better understanding of the characters and their importance in the play.

The character word analysis was also separated into graphs for each character that show the word frequencies in a visual way. This allows for easier analysis of the characters because when they are showed in graphic form, only the most meaningful

words are on the graph in order to make for better interpretation. These graphs can also help to understand the play or a character in the play even if one has not read it. By seeing the different word frequencies one can infer what each character values and from those inferences a general sense of the relationships that characters may have to one another can be formed. Also with the help of character interaction maps one can see the characters’ relationships and the strength of those relationships from scene to scene and make an even more educated conjecture as to what is going on in the play.

            The last word analysis tool that The Venetian Project utilizes is the tool WordHoard. This tool has the complete works of Shakespeare already in the database of the tool and allows for comparative word analysis across his different plays. The Venetian Project does a comparative analysis of the tragic character of the play, Shylock with tragic characters in his other plays, namely: Othello, King Leer, Hamlet, and Macbeth. In being able to cross analyze the character of Shylock to other characters similar to him in other Shakespearean plays it gives further insight into Shylock and into the role of tragic characters. To undergo the task of comparing the two characters word frequencies The Venetian Project puts the tragic character of Shylock and the tragic character he is being compared to into two separate graphs with their most frequent words. In doing this, meaningful analyses can be made as to what is important to each character according to their words and it lends insight into what is the cause of their grief and strife. In comparing the characters of Hamlet and Shylock, one would see that Shylock uses words like ducat, Christian, thousand, judge, and  bond the most indicating that his plight deals with his greed and need for judgment of those who wronged him. While Hamlet’s word frequency graph includes words such as make, man, sir, why; which indicate that his grief centers on the search for his father’s murder and the morality of it. This is just one of the ways in which a text tool like WordHoard could serve as useful; the idea of comparing word analysis between plays can lead to completely new interpretations and meaning of the texts.

            The three main concepts of The Venetian Project that were used to analyze the text, enhance the quality of the work of Shakespeare by creating new analysis from data input and displaying it in an organized visual way. The Venetian Project also went so far as to attempt to create an entire visual experience for the Merchant of Venice. Not only were the graphs that displayed the data easy to understand there was an explanation for each graph. There was the inclusion of the character interaction maps to show how the analysis was made for character relationships. Another visual tool that aided in the understanding of the characters was the pictures created by WordsEye. WordsEye is a text-to-scene tool that allows the user to input words and from the words a scene is rendered. The pictures included on The Venetian Project website were those that were made through inputting words that represented the character for which the picture was meant to represent. As result the pictures were representative of the character’s values and word frequencies. Therefore this tool alongside some of the other word analysis tools furthered understanding of the characters.

The Venetian Project illustrates through the different meaningful analyses that were projected on the website the usefulness and importance of data driven analysis. The era of close reading has been drawn out as long as possible. In order to come up with new, fresh interpretations from work that is centuries old or older a new approach must be adopted. This project clearly demonstrates the world of possibilities that lie within range through this type of analysis and through displaying it in a visual manner. In this century it is clear that there is an appeal and more of a necessity for visual representation of information. The interpretation and absorption of material is that much more successful when it is displayed in a more visually pleasing and organized manner. To expect everyone to be able to understand and interpret Shakespeare’s works, written in old English and fantastic prose is unrealistic. With text analysis tools and the graphing of important data in the way that The Venetian Project does it allows literature to be more comprehensible to everyone thus reaching larger audiences.  

 

 

 

Works Cited

Oxford English Dictionary, "close, a. and adv.." Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.

Oxford University Press. 16 Mar 2009

<http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/cgi/entry/50041845/5004

1845se23?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=close+reading&first=1&max

_to_show=10&hilite=50041845se23>.

Ryan Cadinha, Lillian Lim, Kristina Moore, Jason Wong, "Home (The Venetian

            Project)." Google Sites. March 8, 2009. English 149. 16 Mar 2009

<http://sites.google.com/site/thevenetianproject2/>.

 

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

            1999.

 

 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.