The Legal Concept Of The Merchant Of Venice

This thesis explores the relationship between law and literature and demonstrates that they share the common values at macro level. While we cannot directly identify specific knowledge of the law in literary works, these two ideologies mutually learn from and influence each other. Consequently, we can find legal concepts in the process of exploration, mining the concepts of justice and humanism in laws which are hidden in literature. The "Merchant of Venice" is selected as the legal material for analysis and discussion for its status of being a famous literary work and its important value in studying the relationship between law and literature. This paper discusses the legal concepts within literature and aims to illustrate the consistency between the legal ideas within the literature and modern concept of the law. The law exists to comply with the requirements of the community, but more importantly to balance the standard of social management. Literature provides visible legal conflicts, and further reveals the importance of the validity and reasonability of the law. Firstly, the differences and connections between law and literature, as well as the social and legal context of "Merchant of Venice" have been discussed. On this basis, the effect of literature on law as well as the humanity within law have been analyzed. Secondly, specific to the play "The Merchant of Venice," three different legal concepts from the fundamental perspective of freedom, justice and legality have been conveyed. Finally, through the acting of the literary figures: Shylock, Portia, Antonio, the success and failure of the law in theater have been analyzed, which lays a foundation for the consistency between the humanism and justice within the law. It should be emphasized that the legal concept of justice within "Merchant of Venice", especially the "poetic justice" of Nussbaum further confirms that literary works like "Merchant of Venice" are influential and significant to politics and public policy life. Here the concept of justice is expressed in the combination of the idea of justice within the literature and the “poetic justice”. And it is illustrated that drama can be an effective method to associate the rule of law with the society. Meanwhile, the idea of justice that is suitable to realistic society has been reconsidered within the imaginary space created by literature, with the purpose of achieving a humane society. While on the other hand, the justice within humane law requires to maintain the legal order of human society at a lower level of demand, which means the “poetic justice” can supplement the limitations of legal justice. In this consideration, the requirements of the construction of legal social have been further analyzed. In short, the "Law and Literature" movement has attracted our attention, and the seemingly separate fields of law and literature do intervene with each other.