Critics 61-80 Flashcards
61
Kastan - ‘[Othello has a] fall from prosperity to wretchedness’
62
Loomba - ‘Othello is a victim of racial beliefs precisely as he becomes an agent of misogynistic ones’
63
Leavis - ‘The noble Othello is now seen as tragically pathetic’
64
Schlegel 1700s - ‘Othello’s descent into murderous jealousy not a shocking reversal, but as the inevitable return to an innately barbarous man to his ostensibly uncivilised roots’
65
Loomba - ‘[the play is] a nightmare of male violence’
66
Honingmann - ‘[Iago is] the cleverest person in the play’
67
Honingmann - ‘[Iago] enjoys a god-like sense of power’
68
Mack - ‘The female is doomed never to be believed’
69
Nuttall - Describes himself as someone who “shares the general taste for discomfort”, both Iago and audience revel in the downfall of Othello
70
Aristotle - ‘Tragic victims have to be purely innocent and unaware of events. They have to be victim as a result of the hero’s hamartia’
71
Feminist approach - Reading of Emilia’s character, Desdemona arguably transgressive in defying father but on the other hand trades one form of patriarchal oppression for another in marrying Othello
72
Simpson - ‘[Desdemona] dies in service of the truth’
73
A.C Bradley - ‘Evil has nowhere been portrayed with such mastery as in the character of Iago’
74
A.C Bradley - ‘any man, situated as Othello was, would have been disturbed by Iago’s communications’
75
A.C Bradley - describes how Othello sees his murder of Desdemona as a sacrifice, “he is to save Desdemona from herself”
