From Venice to Cyprus: bifocal structure of «Othello»

IJOES, 2022

The current study is a new investigation of The Tragedy of Othello as an honor-killing tragedy that deals with the issues of love and honor under the context of the patriarchal institution of marriage. However, its primary concern is the hero's internal conflict that sets on the collision of love and honor under the influence of the external factor played by Iago, whose role is necessary to bring these two passions into collision and, accordingly, leads to the tragic end. The significance of this study is apparent. It is new. Unlike other various studies, it analyses the issue of love in terms of the (neo) platonic theory of love for the first time. The second place offers new valuable insights into Othello's tragic flaws. It proves the play is a tragedy of character and the hero's ruin is due to neither jealousy nor racism. His drawback is his upholding the absoluteness of these two passions. As a husband, he has failed to prey to his absolute adherence to the patriarchal attitude concerning honor and was unable to recognize the validity of his absolute love for his wife and her innocence.

Balıkesir Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi

In this article, I deal with otherness, namely foreignness in Shakespearean drama. Particularly, the representation of alterity in Shakespeare's Othello is the dominant issue throughout. A number of Shakespeare's plays include a foreign character; however, each of them fulfils a different function. In Shakespeare's drama, "others" represent more than commonplace "alien" figures. They are ascribed several functions by critics. According to Margo Hendricks, they are caricatures, stereotypes other than real characters. On the other hand, Loomba aptly argues that "others are only figures of speech in Shakespearean drama, conjured up to establish a point of view". In her view, these outsiders are initially regarded as "footnotes", that is, they have secondary importance in the theatres; however, later on they gain value as a means to probe the relationship between West and East. In this context Othello, apart from the undesirable "alien" character, undertakes a multi-functional role in community. It is put forward in this study that Othello is two-dimensional in terms of his roles. On the one hand he is "other" who symbolizes, so to speak, the enemies of the "same". From this aspect, he is assimilated and moulded in accordance with the available order. On the other hand, he is an individual member of the community who undertakes a complementary function that is emphasized throughout. Shakespeare, who stands in between this duality, comes up with the solution of presenting this character as scapegoat. However, that kind of sacrifice does not satisfy the biased audience; on the contrary, the majority ends up sympathizing with the victim. The people's prejudices show a boomerang effect by turning towards them in the end.

2016

William Shakespeare’s Othello is indubitably one of his most popular and successful plays.Nevertheless, like his other great works, it suffers from some literary and stylistic faults and problems. Several eminent critics such as Thomas Rymer, Samuel Johnson, A. C. Bradley, Harley Granville Barker, and J. Dover Wilson have dealt with this issue. Some of the most important faults they have found in this play include the question of time, the improbability of the events, the inconsistency of characterization, moral defects, and the absence of poetic justice. In some cases, the faults attributed to this great play are the result of misguided and wrongheaded criticism; in others, however, they are real deficiencies resulted from Shakespeare’s carelessness or his concern over the success of his play in performance rather than its plausibility and critical correctness as aliterary text. In the present article, these problems are discussed, and it is explained whether they are serious probl...

2017

This article reads Othello through the discourse of cultural materialism. To do so, the writer’s discourse therefore, becomes that of the hysterical discourse going against the dominant discourse of the work. Cultural materialism borrows the ideas of many critics in order to study canonical works against the grain. Thus, this article uses cultural materialism in order to read Othello against the grain. To read it so requires resisting or hystericising the dominant discourse and worldview and shifting sympathy. The gaze of Othello signifies how psychologically the white society looked at him and how the white society considered him. Othello is Moorish and hence an Arab in Europe, manifestly calling to mind all the multifaceted confrontations and conflicts of Self/Other in a framework of power struggle. He is a non-western protagonist whose wife, a European equals Othello’s tribe. Othello is an odd-one-out protagonist whose wife, Desdemona, is referred to as a pearl. This pearl calls ...

This article argues that Othello dramatizes the struggle between two characters to control the interpretive possibilities of their world. These two characters are Othello and Iago. They both try to bring the inherent polysemy of the play under their control. This enables them to control the destiny of the other characters and their actions. The play cannot have two dominant interpreters. This is why the general and his ancient can only vie for supremacy. Each of them is ready to destroy anyone — including himself — to win over the other. To explain their strategies, I will make use of certain terms invented by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco. Eco’s semiotic categories will help us highlight the way in which Iago and Othello direct the processes whereby the different elements of drama are imbued with signification.

2011

This paper attempts to trace how Shakespeare's Othello reflects the deeprooted Eurocentric ideology of the Elizabethan people and show how such views created distinctions like self vs. other, master vs. slave, civilized vs. savage, white vs. black, good vs. evil, strong vs. weak, occident vs. orient. These views had such a deep impact that many writers have portrayed the Europeans as superior and the ‗self' as belonging to the ‗centre' or ‗Occident,' whereas people in faraway lands are shown as inferior and the ‗other' belonging to the ‗margin' or ‗Orient'. In Elizabethan England, African men were regarded as illiterate, barbaric, lustful womanizers who were the white man's property and apt to be used as servants. These views have been handed down century after century. However, in the play Othello Shakespeare breaks away from these beliefs and introduces an African man who disregards such stereotypical views and thus shocking his audience with this deviation from the norm. He presents a reality that African men are indeed polite, educated, loyal and faithful husbands. Shakespeare even makes Othello more prejudiced against his own culture than against another race.

Tragedy is about torn-apart forces that influence human emotions and desires. The tragic heros are in defeat of making sense of their world in Shakespeare's tragedies Hamlet and Othello. This paper will try to examine the three phases Hamlet and Othello experience--alienation from the world by facing its meaninglessness, struggling for making sense through acting against their natures, and reconciliation (a redemption towards meaning) with their worlds in the end--focusing on the fact that though these men suffer through emotional and moral dissolution that lead them to question their beings, and consequently, carry the imperative to act--to take revenge--as tragic heroes. In the end, they have the power to create something new out of nothing. In other words, they gain awareness of life which has once been insignificant.

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

In 1980, American Psychiatrists Association announced that trauma is a mental disorder under the term of PTSD. By that time, trauma became a popular field of study for the literary scholars specially literary critics such as Cathy Caruth, as it offered new insights into traditional literary criticism. The increase of psychological and physical violence all over the world, in the last twenty years has made trauma and witness inevitable realities of life. The evident role of “testimony” and “talking cure” had already been demonstrated by scholars such as Sigmund Freud; but then it has become clear that literature can reflect and even cure the unspeakable pains of trauma victims. This article is an attempt to show that Shakespeare‟s Othello is affected by different sorts of unresolved traumas such as racial and war traumas. The writers of this paper have tried to show that the unresolved traumas of a tragic hero can cause tragic ends and affect other characters in the play. The finding...

This chapter presents a new perspective on the means by which Othello falls from his position of high status both within Venetian society and in the eyes of the play's audience. By examining the pertinent critical history of Othello, especially criticism accounting for the effects on Othello of Iago's machinations, this analysis explores the social and ideological relations between Iago and Othello through the lenses of several different critical approaches, including new historicist and cultural materialist. Our aim is to reveal the contradictions and limitations in this critical history that encourage an examination of the play according to a more inclusive approach that we call "transversal theory," which will be explained as the analysis progresses. 1 In doing this, we hope to emancipate the critical history of Othello from the delimiting analytical parameters that have characterized it, and to show the transversal ways in which Iago paradoxically opposes and reifies Venetian state ideology.

Among the literary works involving racial issues, Shakespeare's Othello holds a special status due to the fact that it is one of the earliest literary works which touched upon the identity problem of blacks in Europe. Referring to Shakespeare's Othello, Caryl Philips examines the issue of identity crisis and trauma in his The Nature of Blood with a keen eye on the ambitions and feelings of a black character who moves from South to Venice on a private mission. The main purpose of this study is to reveal the struggle of a black man, Carly Philips' Othello, who suffers from a deep identity crisis imposed on him by the society he lives in, and to discuss to what extent the Venetian environment has been influential in shaping Othello's identity and thus examine the trauma Othello experiences. This paper delves deep into the inner conflicts Othello experiences, uncovers his trauma, and focuses on his efforts to reform his identity in conformity with his environment. The newly gained experiences in this foreign environment reformats Othello's original identity and this reformation period turns out to be a process in which Othello leaves his original self and accommodates himself with the newly gained social codes.