othello Flashcards
how do you identify prose?
runs margin to margin
why would verse be used over prose?
prose is too regular for expressing madness
what is blank verse?
iambic pentameter, to add song-like quality to ordinary English
the use of Venice to Cyprus then being narrowed to a single bedroom implies what?
claustrophobia. mimics the singular concern
what does the setting of Venice imply?
cultural sophistication, power, wealth, order
what was Cyprus acknowledged as during the Jacobean era?
a “halfway house” between civilisation and the heathen world
what might the storm in scene 2 be described as?
deus ex machina
what can Iago be considered as?
a Machiavellian malcontent - a ruthless and deceitful character who is dissatisfied with society and therefore delight in their manipulative evil
what is the concept of a Machiavellian malcontent credited to?
Machiavelli.
advocated for political deceit and manipulation to benefit someone
what is a malcontent able to do?
comments on the action and may even acknowledge they’re in a play
who was the Battle of Lepanto between?
Christian Republic of Venice and Muslim Ottoman Empire
who wrote the original Othello and what changed?
Cinthio
Battle of Lepanto
who won the Battle and what did this do?
Christian Republic of Venice
restored Christian control
what was the effect of the Battle of Lepanto mirroring the tensions of the Venetians and Ottomans?
audience understands the level of tension
Dr Johnson
“from the first scene to the last hated and despised.”
Charles Lamb
“the ambition, the aspiring spirit, intellectual activity which prompts them to overleap moral fences.”
Honnigmann on Iago’s jokes
“practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind”
“plays chief humourist”
Honnigmann on Iago and the audience
we “may come close to sympathising with a villain.”
Honnigmann and friendship
“he has never felt nor understood the spiritual impulses that bind ordinary human beings together, loyalty friendship, respect and compassion.”
Leavis on Othello stabbing Desdemona
“the noble Othello is now seen as tragically pathetic”
Leavis on Othello’s reputation
“Othello is, we cannot doubt, the stoic-captain whose few words know their self-sufficiency”
Loomba
the myth of Venice - the model of civility
Queen Elizabeth said…
public speech about the issues of “Blackamoors”
what stereotype did Leavis look at?
“sensual possessiveness, appetite”
genetically prone to uncontrollable sexual jealousies and urges
C. L. R James
Othello is about jealousy not rage, as if you removed all aspects of race for the plot, you’d have the same basic story
Okri
“any Black man who has gone out with a white woman knows there are a lot of Iagos around”
what is the irony of the handkerchief?
romantic token of love or dropped to provoke chivalry
what do the strawberries on the handkerchief symbolise?
blood on white sheets
Christian symbol of righteousness
sensuous sexuality
what is meant by the “reputation stereotype of women?”
rep was a social commodity for survival - unlovable if outspoken, etc.
what is the virgin or whore stereotype?
4 female statuses: maiden, wife, widow, whore
what is the silent women stereotype?
in Middle Ages punishment for “nagging” wives, all 3 women push this boundary and 2 die for it
what is the double standard gender stereotype?
Desdemona is ignorant of infidelity, Cassio seeing a prostitute is common
what is the femme fatal?
a woman so beautiful that she is dangerous bc they’re magic
what is the sacrificial victim stereotype?
females cannot live up to male expectations of divinity so falls off her pedestal
Waugh
“Iago has latent homosexual desires which drive his obsession with Othello’s relationship with Desdemona”
Emery
Othello’s seizure - “in the unconscious, Othello desired to escape unbearable reality by means of a trance”
Strickler
“rural England correlated the bodies of animals with women”
Newman
“Iago’s manipulation of Othello depends on the Moor’s own prejudice against his Blackness and belief that the fair Desdemona would prefer the white Cassio”
Auden
“Joker of the pack”
Goddard
Iago has the “highest intellectual gifts”
Leavis on Othello’s acting
“histrionic”
“Self-dramatising”
Tennenhouse
Desdemona being killed was “silencing of the female political voice”
Phillips
Desdemona is a “possession” or “prize”
French
Desdemona is “self denying in the extreme” when she dies
Coleridge on D’s murder
“The superhuman art of Iago”
Iagos brilliance is
O’Toole
lies not in what he puts in Othello’s mind but what “he draws out of it”
anagorisis
the truth is revealed
Catharsis
Audience feeling justified
Periperteia
Change in fortune
Hamartia
Fatal flaw
