Abstract

The ‘true’ story of the Merchant. Law, sacrifice and justice in the city of Venice] This short essay, starting from the mimetic theory of the French anthropologist René Girard, gives an interpretation of The Merchant of Venice. The story of to the contract signed between the Jew Shylock and the merchant Antonio takes place in the city of Venice and stages a real mimetic crisis that the Venetians overcome thanks to the sentence inflicted on the Jew, a real scapegoat of events. The essay, analyzing the relationship between sacrifice and justice, raises the question whether the playwright's verses do represent an attempt to reveal the meaning of what René Girard has defined as texts of persecution or, rather, if they should be considered one of them.