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HUM 396 The Villain Dr A. Peever Class Notes Page 1

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Dr. A. Peever

HUM 396

March 12 2012

Sample Article Summary: James Shapiro’s “Circumcision & the Pound of Flesh”

In James Shapiro’s essay “Circumcision and the ‘Pound of Flesh’” (in Norton 226-239) Shapiro notes that

the word “flesh” was often used in the sixteenth century to mean “penis” and Jews were thought of as

circumcisors by Christians. He argues therefore that the phrase “a pound of flesh” plays on “men’s

obsessive anxiety about castrating cuts” (228). He considers a source narrative which takes the flesh not

from nearest the heart but from “that part of his body which it is not necessary to mention” (229). Shapiro

goes on to consider the apostle Paul (the great explicator of the meaning of the life of Christ in his New

Testament letters). One of Paul’s themes concerns “the circumcision of the heart” (233), a symbolic idea

developed from or “borrowed” (234) by Paul, from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, of “the spiritual

end of the ceremony . . . true holiness and righteousness” (235). Shapiro compares this religious paradigm

of opposition between Jewish and Christian ideas with a Freudian paradigm which would similarly see

the displacement from the literal pound of flesh to the symbolic (the heart as seat of the spirit) as “ a

substitute expression of castration” (235) which “displaces the performance from a part of the body below

to above” (235), the sort of function often carried out by Freud’s dream-work. Next, Shapiro explains the

concept of “uncircumcision” (a literally possible operation 1 ), which he argues is what finally occurs

symbolically in the confrontation between Antonio (via his proxy, Portia) and Shylock: “the christ’ning

that Shylock is to receive will metaphorically uncircumcise him” (238). Thus, in short, as it were, Shylock

attempts a sort of literal circumcision, which a Christian imagines as a castration, but is outwitted and

instead suffers the symbolic cut of an uncircumcision or conversion to Christianity, which a Christian

audience in 16 th century London would have understood, via the comic mode, as being to his benefit.

Works Cited

Funcheon, Deirdra. “Just a Little off the Top: Circumcision Activists Square off against Thousands of

Years of Tradition.” Miami New Times. 28.47 pp. 13-18. Feb. 16-22 2012. Print.

Shapiro, James. “Circumcision & the Pound of Flesh.” The Merchant of Venice. NY: W.W. Norton, 2006.

Print.

1 See e.g. Deirdra Funcheon’s Feb. 2012 Miami New Times cover story “Just a Little off the Top” page 18, in which

Michael Dulin describes his “foreskin restoration.” Funcheon says, “Dulin is aware some people find his project

extreme” (18).