ABSTRACT
This text was conceived and begun in the Orient, the Middle East (American University of Beirut) and was completed in the Occident (University of Central Florida). Between the beginning of an end, the birth of a death, the end of a beginning and the death of a birth, in that painful intersection, this text aims at tracing the phenomena and events of opening and cutting that leave their imprints upon the textual landscape of The Merchant of Venice. It will not be a question here of repeating or returning to the paradigm of the circumcision, but of highlighting that Shylock’s attempt to open the body, to make an incision into the Christian body of Antonio represents and reproduces a willingness to attack and to profane the Eucharist.
