Tragedy Flashcards
A striking noble hero suffers a reversal of fate due to key flaw and hamartia or judgment, which leads to…
Widespread suffering
Dramatic irony and audience’s foreknowledge…
Increases sense of tragedy
Travel writing in the 16th century, often …
Embellished experiences and eroticised people, ‘cannibals’ and ‘anthropophogi’ as a fantastical way to please the white Venetian audience
Repetitions in the play that create dramatic parallels and….
Draw our attention to how rapidly relationships and characters have deteriorated
Act 1 othello on trial and defends himself and his marriage to the Venetian senators but by….
Act 4, he is the one cross-examining his wife and judging her faithfulness
Act 2 oth and des run off to bed to consummate their marriage, ….
The next time the audience sees des in bed, she is killed by othello in the same wedding sheets
The word ‘honest’ is repeated 52 times in the play….
Epithet used by othello to describe iago ‘honest iago’, forlorn dramatic irony bc he is utterly convinced of his honesty and cannot see the depiction that the audience is privy to.
As the play moves to Cyprus, it zooms into personal matters instead of state affairs….
So outside forces become insignificant, claustrophobic for audience and characters as there is no outside forces to alleviate some of the dramatic tension and intensity
Iago is structurally dominant throughout the play…
His on stage time corresponds to his importance and authority in the plot, an impression of his power or the rapid spread of evilness infiltrating the stage
Othello blank verse, unrhymed lines of poetry written in iambic pentameter illustrate that…
Othello is dignified and stately, his speech is elevated and authoritative
Breakdown of blank verse to prose mirrors his own mental breakdown…
Fractured and complete u turn by act 4 ; ‘handkerchief-confessions-hankerchief’
A hero exploited by an …
un fathomable villain
Domestic tragedy
Their passionate, emotionally charged and equal marriage is a threat to the rules established by patriarchal order , ultimately the play suggests that if the social order is to continue, this marriage must be terminated
Othello= while some mourn his death and see it as heroic in the way he acknowledges the shame of his conduct, others, like leavis, see his final speech as …..
Self-dramatising, with its focus, not on his victims, but on himself and how he will be remembered
‘Motiveless malignancy’
Some clear aims, but more of an opportunistic villain whose ideas gather momentum as he tastes success. Perhaps what’s most disturbing is that his plotting and the torture he inflicts on innocent people are clearly a source of pleasure to him. He enjoys the destruction of love which he does not understand.
