Critical articles on othello. Othello Critical Essays 2022-12-17
Critical articles on othello
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Othello, a play written by William Shakespeare in the early 17th century, tells the story of a Moorish general in the Venetian army named Othello, who falls in love and marries a Venetian woman named Desdemona. However, the couple's marriage is plagued by jealousy and deceit, ultimately leading to tragedy.
Throughout its history, Othello has been the subject of numerous critical articles and essays, with many scholars and critics examining various themes and issues present in the play. Some of the most common themes that have been analyzed in critical articles on Othello include race, gender, and power.
One common theme that has been explored in critical articles on Othello is the theme of race. Othello is a black man living in a white-dominated society, and his racial difference is a source of tension and conflict throughout the play. Many critics have examined the ways in which Othello's racial difference is used against him, both by external characters such as Iago and by his own internalized sense of inferiority. For example, Iago frequently uses racial slurs and insults against Othello, and Othello himself often feels ashamed of his race and believes that he is not good enough for Desdemona.
Another theme that has been explored in critical articles on Othello is the theme of gender. Desdemona is a strong and independent woman, but she is also subject to the patriarchy of the society in which she lives. Many critics have analyzed the ways in which Desdemona's gender and the expectations placed on her shape her relationship with Othello and contribute to the tragedy of the play.
Finally, the theme of power is also a common subject of critical articles on Othello. Othello holds a position of power as a military general, but he is also powerless in many ways, particularly when it comes to dealing with the scheming of Iago. Many critics have examined the ways in which power is wielded and abused in the play, and the consequences of such abuse.
Overall, critical articles on Othello have shed light on the complex themes and issues present in the play, including race, gender, and power. These themes continue to be relevant and resonant today, making Othello a play that continues to be studied and debated by scholars and critics.
Othello: A Survey of Criticism :: Internet Shakespeare Editions
Desdemona experiences "a slow loss of confidence in the strength of the self, always with the aim of adjusting to marriage" 104 , and thus her death must be laid at the door of a sexist system that celebrates compliance and self-abnegation in wives rather than mutual respect in marriage. Othello may have been grossly deceived, and he may be responsible for not clinging to the truth of his mutual love with Desdemona, but, in his final speech, he does face up to his error with the same passion with which he had followed his earlier misconception. The direction of Othello criticism will also be affected as literary criticism's longstanding commitment to cultural historicism comes under pressure from those who argue that explorations of context often come at the expense of literature's formal properties and affective registers, and as developments in the digital humanities enable fresh methods of exploring this engaging text. Iago insists that it is difficult for him to easily imagine the praises for women that Desdemona asks. The play shows that Othello is always imploring for a brawl. Most notable was Parker's own "Fantasies of 'Race' and 'Gender'" which interrogates notions of monstrosity, barbarousness, and civility by locating in the play a series of "split chiastic exchanges and divisions" that see Desdemona and Othello trading cultural identities as they assume varied roles within the complexly racialized and gendered narratives of literary teratology and colonialism. His suggestion that Othello has seduced his own wife is an even flimsier fabrication to cover his essential corruption.
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Influenced by the same impulses that propelled the American civil rights movement, many of these critics explored the play's relationship to early modern representations of race rather than its formal properties. He seems to breathe an atmosphere as fateful as that of King Lear, but more confined and oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous room. . No more of that. This is a short critical analysis examining the play from multiple perspectives.
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Character Analysis of Shakespeare's Othello
. This period produced such groundbreaking work as Eldred Jones's Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama 1965 and G. Iago pretends to search for those responsible for the villainy. Othello is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension" 131.
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Critical Analysis of The Tragedy Of Othello » Smart English Notes
Venice was at the time of writing the play one of the most influential and cosmopolitan European cities. It is not simply that Iago is universally believed. . Unless the actions really took place in either two to three days, Desdemona would not have had enough time to be unfaithful and the result of the play would have been unbelievable. Catch-22 is appreciated for its black humor, extensive use of flashbacks, contorted chronology, countercultural sensibilities, and bizarre language structures.
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Critical Analysis Of Othello
Critically, we seek to understand the cries of women in the play and their seeking to find out the root causes of their problems and the best way to curb them. Vice was a villainous stock character, who kept the viewer conscious of his purpose by asides and soliloquies. . Research and Education Association, Inc. The stage directions in the Tragedy of Othello are realistic. Iago's Jealousies In Shakespeare's Othell. Hytner has written sympathetically of the panic attacks that overcome him as the curtain goes up on a Shakespeare play and you don't know what anyone is talking about.
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Essays and articles on Shakespeare's Othello
Iago urges Cassio to ask Desdemona for help to get reinstated with Othello. Othello continued into the early twentieth century, when, thanks to A. Othello as a literary confirmation of this hierarchical view began to gain ground. To the brutish coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection. Identify and trace the contrasts between black and white images, love and lost, and honesty and dishonesty as they are presented throughout the play. This article was published in Shakespeare Quarterly 55.
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Othello Critical Thinking Examples That Really Inspire
Situating Othello within the discourse of early modern geohumoralism—the myth that "variations in topography and climate produced variations in national characteristics" 133 —Floyd-Wilson argues that while early in the play Othello matches early modern constructions of southerners as cool and wise, he is later contaminated by Iago and becomes "hybrid—alienated from his Moorish complexion by an Italianate doubleness" 155. He did only that for his own pleasure and no other reason. From that point on, it is easy for Iago to falsify evidence and create appearances that will lead to erroneous judgments. Othello, with its emphasis on Othello's nobility, Desdemona's saintliness, and Iago's central role as destroyer of their mutual and admirable love, has been enormously influential, although his approach has been attacked vigorously over the years, mostly notably in the 1930s by G. Pairing a sustained reading of the formal and affective qualities of Othello with analysis alert to both discontinuities and consistencies in almost 400 years of critical and theatrical response to the play, Pechter demonstrates that the interpretive traditions that have grown up around Othello often say more about the preoccupations of their creators than about the play they purport to elucidate. Martin Wangh's " Othello: The Tragedy of Iago," for instance, treats Iago as a case study in repressed homosexuality, arguing that the ensign's stifled erotic desire for Othello causes him to despise, and so to seek the destruction of, his rival for the general's affection, Desdemona.
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Othello
Bruce Smith's pioneering work on homosexuality in early modernity also built on Snow's insights as it investigated the fraught relationship between masculine friendship and marriage in Shakespeare Homosexual Desire 1991. The stage directions are the realistic forms of domestic tragedy. Nothing is more odious in nature than an improbable lie, and, certainly, never was any play fraught, like this of Othello, with improbabilities. His performance has been keenly anticipated by Hustle fans and by those who saw him in Red Velvet as Ira Aldridge, the 19th-century African American actor who became celebrated as a declamatory Othello. It was isolated from the colonial government. While this gross oversimplification of the play based on racist stereotypes seems absurdly simpleminded now, its account of the association of Moorish identity with violent sensuality persisted, in various guises, throughout the nineteenth century.
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Othello Critical Evaluation
Othello, and then argues that the play offers crucial insight into human nature: The beauties of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. Othello betrays hyperemotional behavior in his rantings and his fits, but these are the result of his acceptance of what seems indisputable proof. Finally, Othello arrives giving him the opportunity to renew his marriage vows to Desdemona: It gives me wonder great as my content To see you here before me. Noting that Othello shares a number of features with traditional morality plays, Spivak argues that Iago is best understood as a version of the stock character Vice, a personification of evil with a dangerously privileged relationship with the audience. . He saves his most virulent attacks, however, for what he presents as the play's violation of the conventions of a natural hierarchy that positions people of color firmly below white Europeans, and non-Christians below Christians.
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Othello
Her Cypriot military garrison is a place of concrete and camouflage, a brutal arena in which even the scene changes are given a bullying emphasis. Shakespeare writes his play in an era where males are not accepting of women in power and authority. The visual plainness displayed on the stage according to the stage directions focuses directly on the actors and a fascinating account of retaliation, gullibility, and jealousy. That such a man should fall so far and so fast gives the play an almost unbearable momentum. The false impression of the characters regarding what is really happening further lead them to jump to major conclusions, causing their demises. Desdemona is, on Jameson's account, a young woman who is neither clever nor dynamic, and whose dominant features—her goodness and gentleness—are both beyond her control and inadequate to ensure her survival: "Desdemona displays at times a transient energy, arising from the power of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the character—gentleness in excess—gentleness verging on passivity—gentleness which not only cannot resent—but cannot resist" 218. One is used literally to show the racial discrimination suffered by the character and trigger the consequences that followed while the latter is a figurative representation of abstract ideas.
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