Janet Adelman

Who was Janet Adelman?

Janet Adelman was a Shakespearean scholar, a literary critic, and professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Adelman’s most prominent works include book-length critiques of William Shakespeare’s plays presenting new psychoanalytic and feminist readings of Antony and Cleopatra and The Merchant of Venice in "The Common Liar: An Essay on 'Antony & Cleopatra'" and Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in 'The Merchant of Venice', respectively.

Adelman authored another book, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origins in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to the Tempest, that discusses maternal characters over many of Shakespeare’s works.