Othello Critics Flashcards
“The play reflects the sexism of the period”
Loomba
“Shakespeare was concerned with unregulated female sexuality”
Traub
“Desdemona becomes a stereotype of female passivity”
Jardine
“From the perspective of Venetian culture, the marriage is transgressive”
Neely
“Desdemona is the love of possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war.”
Phillips
“Othello marries Desdemonain an attempt to gain more power”
Greenblatt
“Black people and women as the other”
Loomba
“Othello’s racial identity is literally marked on his skin and can never escape a certain amount of outsider status”
Cleland
“Othello is simultaneously a racialised outsider and Venetian insider”
Bartel
“the play is located on the east-west frontier between Christianity and Islam where Othello veers between the word’s two dominant religions”
Bate
“Othello only begins to turn Turk when he has left the safety of Venice”
Britton
“Desdemona is attracted to Othello’s otherness as a black man”
Newman
“the play exposes the racial fear of the period”
Newman
“Desdemona becomes as much of an outsider as the black man when she marries Othello”
Loomba
“Desdemona as the embodiment of power in Act I”
Tennenhouse
“Emilia’s heroic disobedience”
Greenblatt
“Othello is responsible for his own downfall”
Eliot
lago is a “diabolical stage manager”
Kott
“motiveless malignancy”
Coleridge (early critic)
“lago is the presence of misogynist disourse in the Renaissance”
Wayne
“Iago is constantly sensitive to distinctions in rank”
Bunten
“Desdemona’s soft simplicity”
Johnson (early critic)
“Othello contains materials traditionally belonging to comedy”
Rogers
“Shakespeare reflects the noisy festive abuse of Charivari as an objection to inappropriate marriage”
Bristol
“lago transforms Othello into a “murderous blackface clown”
Bristol
“Othello is a play concerned with the home (domestic tragedy)
Whipday
“The handkerchief is an emblem of Desdemona’s body”
Wayne
“The handkerchief acts as a miniature of the nuptial lines”
Callaghan
“Characters divide into virgins and saints or whores and devils”
Cox
“Cassio is a man of instinctive refinement, yet lacking Othello’s depth of passion”
Bradley
“Casio’s obsession with reputation contrasts with Othello’s self destructive pride”
FR Leavis
“Cassio’s survival and promotion symbolises the restoration of ‘Venetian order’
FR Leavis
“Cassio is an innocent victim of Iago’s schemes”
Honingman
