Anthology quotes Flashcards
What is Honigmann’s overall argument on the character of Iago?
Anthology E- 1
- Iago is a capable deceiver and very powerful
- His humor is more corrupt and disturbing than its conventional portrayal (sadistic)
- He is very capable but his inability to experience normal emotions like love is the ultimate cause of his downfall (as he does not think Emilia’s love for Desdemona will cause her to betray her husband)
Honigmann key quotes about Iago
- “Liar, betrayer, mental torturer of Othello and Desdemona, murderer”
- “He is anything but straightforward”
- “His humour either intends to give pain or allows himself to bask in his sense of his own superiority”
- “He enjoys a godlike sense of power”
- “Iago appeals to us as more amusing”
- “despite his cleverness, he has neither felt nor understood the spiritual impulses that bind ordinary human beings together, loyalty, friendship, respect, compassion… love”
- “Emilia’s love is Iago’s undoing”
What does Dr Johnson say about Iago, that is echoed by Bradley?
within Honigmanns article
“The character of Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised”
What does Charles Lamb say about Iago?
within Honigmanns article
For Shakespeare’s criminals we don’t think about their actions but:
“the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity which prompts them to overleap those moral fences”
What does Auden say about Iago?
within Honigmanns article
Iago as the:
“Joker in the pack”
“practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind”
What does Harold Goddard say about Iago?
within Honigmanns article
Shakespeare has bestowed the:
“greatest intellectual gifts” on Iago
What is Leavis’ overall argument on the character of Othello?
Doesn’t accept Othello’s dignity and instead perceives him as a self-dramatised and indulgent character who lives and dies as a performer. Believes his suffering doesn’t cause him to learn. Argues Othello’s suicide is an attempt to be remebered as the good guy
Leavis key quotes abut Othello
Antholgogy E- 2
- “But he remains the same Othello… there is no tragic self-discovery”
- The quiet beginning gives us the man of action with his habit of effortless authority”
- Othello is a “stoic captain” who becomes “unmistakably self-dramatization”
- “spectacle of himself, Othello is overcome with the pathos of it” (talking about death scene)
Does othello’s outsideness cause him to perform for the venetians?
What are the key ideas of Loomba in ‘Othello, race and society’?
Discusses colonialism and race. Part 1 explores Othello fulfilling the stereotypes of a Moor and Muslim and part 2 describes the presentation of Venice, and how it relates to London
Loomba key quotes about Othello
- Othello is a “fantasy of interracial love” and a “nightmare of racial hatred and male violence”
- “Location, skin colour, and class are seen to add up to ‘nature’ itself”
- Due to Iago’s manipulation “Othello is predisposed to believing… the inherent duplicity of women”
- “relationship between a young, white, well-born woman, and an older black soldier”
- “Othello is a victim of racial beliefs precisely as he becomes an agent of mysoginist ones”
Loomba key quotes about race and stereotypes
- Black people as portrayed as “godless, bestial, and hideous, fit only to be saved by Christians”
- “Both blacks and Muslims were regarded as given to unnatural sexual and domestic practices, as highly emotional… prone to anger and jealousy”
- Moors believed to have a “capacity for tenderness as well as a propensity to violence”
Loomba key quotes about venice and society
- “female devience”
- “ideal republic and hub of international trade”
- “open but ordered society, a model of civility”
- “England was increasingly hostile to foreigners, both officially and at a popular level”
