Othello Critics Flashcards
Charles Gildon on race
‘Much better Christians than we of Europe generally are. They move by a nobler principle, more open, free and generous, and not such slaves to sordid interest’ (1694)
Johnson on Emilia’s virtue
‘Worn loosely but not cast off, easy to commit small crimes but quickened and alarmed atrocious villainies’.
GK Hunter (1967)
‘Iago is the white man with the black soul’
‘Othello is the black man with the white soul’
Hogan
Othello experiences ‘racial despair’
Paul McQuade, feminist lense
“The impossibility of wifely honesty within a marriage relationship that assumesthat husband and wife can be friends and thus speak truthfully while insisting on the husband’s social superiority.”
Lisa Jardine and her feminist lense
‘It does not just matter that a woman is called ‘whore’, it matters when and where she is…’
Eamon Grennan
‘her own verbal energy represents a danger to men’s sense of propriety and order in their world.’
Kiernan Ryan
The really disturbing thing about Iago is not that he’s an unfathomable psychopath, but that he’s pathologically normal and theatrically irresistible.’
Ruth Cowig, Post-Colonial lense
Iago’s contempt for Othello… which drives his on are based on arrogant racism
Fintan O’Toole, iago is brilliant - Psychoanalytical reading
Iago’s brilliance lies not in what he puts in Othello’s mind, but what he draws out of it’
Fintan O’Toole melting
So close are Iago and Othello, indeed, that they start to melt into each other.’
Fintan O’Toole on race
This racism isn’t just the context in which Othello lives. It has entered his mind and his soul. It is an integral part of him’
Ruth Vanita, feminist lense
Desdemona “is killed not only by Othello and Iago but by all those who see her humiliated and beaten in public, and fail to intervene”
Bonnie Greer, Post - Colonial lense
Othello, the black man considered by some to be the enemy within, discovers that he is his own enemy
Post- colonial lens?
Race and empire lens. Shakespeare’s exploration of the stereotypes associated with race and challenging them at times?
New Historiscism?
How does a text reflect the world in which it exists. Looking explicitly at historical events and how they relate to the play. Contrast of the world of Venice vs Cyprus and how that links to the Elizabethan consciousness of their understanding of the European world and beyond.
Marxist lens?
money and status. Looking at the indulged luxury of Roderigo and the idea that those who have wealth have a misguided ability to have power over others. Iago’s motivational drive due to his loss of status at the beginning.
Feminist lens?
Looking at the impact of the patriarchal society. Deep misogynistic views of women that are embedded – particularly of Venetian women as indicated by the suspicions surrounding Desdemona’s fidelity and how they are readily accepted.
Psychoanalytical reading?
Iago’s manipulations as a powerful external force operating on Othello’s psyche. Could consider the ingrained anxieties that are embedded within Othello’s psyche due to his race etc. Othello at war within himself due to the conflicting influences of Desdemona and Iago.
Melchior
We cannot even see “words like virtue, honesty, love, and soul as originators or meaning, so severely does Iago distort their ordinary meanings, meanings on which all civilised societies depend.”
Honigmann on the two sides of Othello
“we misread the play when we put all of our money on either one or the other.”
Nuttall
‘this man who should have died on the field of battle is destroyed by small-scale household stuff.”
