Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in
The Merchant of Venice who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors, is one of Shakespeare’s most complex and idiosyncratic characters. With his unsettling eloquence and his varying voices of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock remains a source of perennial fascination. What explains the strange and enduring force of this character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare’s plays? Kenneth Gross posits that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is the voice of Shakespeare himself.
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Kenneth Gross
Professor of English
PhD Yale University
Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, theater, English poetry, literature and the visual arts
Research/Writing interests
Much of my work focuses on the inner workings of literary texts, in themselves and as part of a dynamic, ongoing history. I am also interested in the nature of speech, gesture, and expression in drama and theater, ranging from the complexities of character in Shakespearean tragedies to the deceptive simplicities of puppet theater. My central scholarly home is in Renaissance literature, especially the work of Shakespeare and Spenser, but I have written on texts from the middle ages, romanticism, and modernity, from Dante to Rilke, from Ovid to Phillip Roth, as well as more broadly on the relations of literature and visual art. One thing connecting the various facets of my work is a fascination with what Samuel Johnson calls "the force of poetry," "that force which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter."
Selected publications
- Shylock Is Shakespeare, Chicago 2006
- Shakespeare's Noise, Chicago 2001
- The Dream of the Moving Statue, Cornell 1992, paperback edition Pennsylvania State University 2006
- Spenserian Poetics: Idolatry, Iconoclasm, and Magic, Cornell 1985
- "The Madness of Puppets," in The Hopkins Review (new series) 2.2 (spring 2009), 182-205
- "Poets Reading Shakespeare," in Raritan: A Quarterly Review 28.3 (winter 2009), 105-31
- "Harry Berger and Self-Hatred," in A Touch More Rare: Harry Berger, Jr., and the Arts of Interpretation, ed. Nina Levine and David Lee Miller, Fordham 2009
- "Staged in Berlin," in The Berlin Journal 17 (fall 2008), 43-49
- "John Donne's Lyric Skepticism: In Strange Way," in Modern Philology 101.3 (2004), 371-99
- "Satan and the Romantic Satan: A Notebook," in Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions, ed. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson, Methuen 1987, 318-41
- "Infernal Metamorphoses: An Interpretation of Dante's 'Counterpass,'" in MLN (Italian Issue) 100.1 (1985), 42-69
Teaching
My courses take up a variety of poetic and dramatic texts, from the biblical narratives and Renaissance drama to modern poetry. If there is an aim they all share, it is in the desire to help students to understand the complex, often ambiguous life of literary texts, to hone their powers of analysis and response, their ability to listen for what's said and not said in a work of literature, as well as their capacity for surprise.
Recent undergraduate courses
- Milton (spring 2009)
- Lyric Poetry (spring 2009)
- Shakespeare (spring 2007)
- The English Renaissance (spring 2007)
- The Literature of the Bible (fall 2003)
Recent graduate courses
- Shakespeare (fall 2008)
- Shakespearean Tragedy (spring 2006)
- Literature and the Visual Arts
- Spenser and Allegory
Honors and activities
- Ellen Maria Gorrisen Fellow, The American Academy in Berlin, spring 2008
- Research Fellow, Bogliasco Foundation, October-November 2007
- Research Fellow, Bellagio Study and Conference Center (Rockefeller Foundation), September-October 2007
- Visiting Fellow, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University
- National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship
- Senior Research Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
- Mellon Faculty Research Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library
