John Jones
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186885
- eISBN:
- 9780191674594
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186885.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
It has been established by textual specialists, and is now becoming widely accepted, that Shakespeare revised many of his plays, including some of the most celebrated. But how were the great ...
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It has been established by textual specialists, and is now becoming widely accepted, that Shakespeare revised many of his plays, including some of the most celebrated. But how were the great tragedies altered and with what effect? This book looks at the implications of Shakespeare's revisions for the reader and spectator alike and shows the playwright getting to grips with the problems of characterization and scene formation in such plays as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida. The book carries its argument down, as it puts it, to the very tip of Shakespeare's quill pen. The book assesses recent textual scholarship on Shakespeare's revisions and illuminates the artistic impact of the revised texts and their importance for our understanding of each play's moral and metaphysical foundations.Less
It has been established by textual specialists, and is now becoming widely accepted, that Shakespeare revised many of his plays, including some of the most celebrated. But how were the great tragedies altered and with what effect? This book looks at the implications of Shakespeare's revisions for the reader and spectator alike and shows the playwright getting to grips with the problems of characterization and scene formation in such plays as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida. The book carries its argument down, as it puts it, to the very tip of Shakespeare's quill pen. The book assesses recent textual scholarship on Shakespeare's revisions and illuminates the artistic impact of the revised texts and their importance for our understanding of each play's moral and metaphysical foundations.
Laurie Maguire
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197265277
- eISBN:
- 9780191754203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265277.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture explores the boundaries between audiences and actors, and what happens when audiences interact with actors and their characters. Its illustrative case is Desdemona's response to Othello. ...
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This lecture explores the boundaries between audiences and actors, and what happens when audiences interact with actors and their characters. Its illustrative case is Desdemona's response to Othello. When Desdemona marries Othello she crosses the boundary from audience world to the world of fiction (the world of epic hero, adventure stories, travel narratives). In so doing, she initiates a structure in which things that should be kept separate merge: genre (comedy and tragedy), language (the play has more compound words and paradoxes than any other), characters, plots. The mergings are consistently coded as theatrical: this is a tragedy of theatre boundaries gone wrong. Psychologist Edward Bullough's argument from 1912 about distance in the theatre provides the theoretical framework for this lecture to explore the problems when audiences do not keep stage.Less
This lecture explores the boundaries between audiences and actors, and what happens when audiences interact with actors and their characters. Its illustrative case is Desdemona's response to Othello. When Desdemona marries Othello she crosses the boundary from audience world to the world of fiction (the world of epic hero, adventure stories, travel narratives). In so doing, she initiates a structure in which things that should be kept separate merge: genre (comedy and tragedy), language (the play has more compound words and paradoxes than any other), characters, plots. The mergings are consistently coded as theatrical: this is a tragedy of theatre boundaries gone wrong. Psychologist Edward Bullough's argument from 1912 about distance in the theatre provides the theoretical framework for this lecture to explore the problems when audiences do not keep stage.
Lorna Hutson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199212439
- eISBN:
- 9780191707209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212439.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter suggests that we should read Shakespeare's drama written after 1597 as generally responding to the direction in which Ben Jonson was taking the evidential plot and its rhetoric of ...
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This chapter suggests that we should read Shakespeare's drama written after 1597 as generally responding to the direction in which Ben Jonson was taking the evidential plot and its rhetoric of probability. It argues that as Jonson increasingly translates ‘probability’ from its ethical/rhetorical sense into a sense which privileges the power to predict and calculate, Shakespeare, in turn, increasingly demonizes the dramatic figure of the man who can invent probable arguments of suspicion. The chapter illustrates this argument by looking at Jonson's The Alchemist, Epicoene, and Bartholomew Fair, and at Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello. It concludes by contrasting Jonson's assumption, in Every Man in his Humour, that inventions of sexual suspicion are easily exposed and harmless, with Shakespeare's sceptical dramatization, in Much Ado about Nothing, of the pointlessness of evidence where faith is lacking.Less
This chapter suggests that we should read Shakespeare's drama written after 1597 as generally responding to the direction in which Ben Jonson was taking the evidential plot and its rhetoric of probability. It argues that as Jonson increasingly translates ‘probability’ from its ethical/rhetorical sense into a sense which privileges the power to predict and calculate, Shakespeare, in turn, increasingly demonizes the dramatic figure of the man who can invent probable arguments of suspicion. The chapter illustrates this argument by looking at Jonson's The Alchemist, Epicoene, and Bartholomew Fair, and at Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello. It concludes by contrasting Jonson's assumption, in Every Man in his Humour, that inventions of sexual suspicion are easily exposed and harmless, with Shakespeare's sceptical dramatization, in Much Ado about Nothing, of the pointlessness of evidence where faith is lacking.
Stephen Clingman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278497
- eISBN:
- 9780191706981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278497.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The chapter begins by considering aspects of the biography of the black British writer Caryl Phillips, whose work sets out key features in contemporary transnational fiction. Brought to England from ...
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The chapter begins by considering aspects of the biography of the black British writer Caryl Phillips, whose work sets out key features in contemporary transnational fiction. Brought to England from the West Indies at a very young age, the question of identity has always been a profound one for him. Instead of retreating into the self, however, Phillips has found extraordinary points of conjunction and contiguity with others, not least with the Jewish experience in Europe. The chapter explores key ideas in relation to Phillips: questions of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (an illuminating etymology of the term), constellation and faultline, as well as his extraordinary narrative forms. In The Nature of Blood these patterns emerge in narratives involving a female Holocaust survivor and Othello, among others. A Distant Shore explores topics of exile, the national, and transnational in the fragmented spatio-temporal locus of Britain.Less
The chapter begins by considering aspects of the biography of the black British writer Caryl Phillips, whose work sets out key features in contemporary transnational fiction. Brought to England from the West Indies at a very young age, the question of identity has always been a profound one for him. Instead of retreating into the self, however, Phillips has found extraordinary points of conjunction and contiguity with others, not least with the Jewish experience in Europe. The chapter explores key ideas in relation to Phillips: questions of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (an illuminating etymology of the term), constellation and faultline, as well as his extraordinary narrative forms. In The Nature of Blood these patterns emerge in narratives involving a female Holocaust survivor and Othello, among others. A Distant Shore explores topics of exile, the national, and transnational in the fragmented spatio-temporal locus of Britain.
Alfred R. Mele
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199208913
- eISBN:
- 9780191723759
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208913.003.06
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience
This chapter focuses on three specific kinds of delusional confabulation — confabulations associated with the Capgras' syndrome, delusional jealousy (or the Othello syndrome), and the reverse Othello ...
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This chapter focuses on three specific kinds of delusional confabulation — confabulations associated with the Capgras' syndrome, delusional jealousy (or the Othello syndrome), and the reverse Othello syndrome. The aim is to shed some light on what sorts of causes of belief-acquisition or belief-persistence would support or challenge the idea that beliefs expressed in delusional confabulations in general are beliefs the person is self-deceived in acquiring or retaining. In the case of the confabulations, there are significant grounds for caution about the claim that self-deception is involved. But this is not to say that the same grounds for caution are present in all kinds of delusional confabulation.Less
This chapter focuses on three specific kinds of delusional confabulation — confabulations associated with the Capgras' syndrome, delusional jealousy (or the Othello syndrome), and the reverse Othello syndrome. The aim is to shed some light on what sorts of causes of belief-acquisition or belief-persistence would support or challenge the idea that beliefs expressed in delusional confabulations in general are beliefs the person is self-deceived in acquiring or retaining. In the case of the confabulations, there are significant grounds for caution about the claim that self-deception is involved. But this is not to say that the same grounds for caution are present in all kinds of delusional confabulation.
John Jones
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186885
- eISBN:
- 9780191674594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186885.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter compares the Quarto and Folio versions of Othello. The Quarto and Folio version of Othello represent two acting texts of the one play. The Quarto was printed either from the prompter's ...
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This chapter compares the Quarto and Folio versions of Othello. The Quarto and Folio version of Othello represent two acting texts of the one play. The Quarto was printed either from the prompter's manuscript book, or from Shakespeare's autograph, or from a transcript of that autograph made by a professional scribe. The Folio version derives from Shakespeare's revision of his play. Possibly the removal of profanities and other changes were incorporated in an existing manuscript, but they are so many and complex as to make that very unlikely. The high probability is that Shakespeare wrote out the whole of Othello afresh, and the bibliographical evidence suggests, inconclusively, that a scribe copied what he wrote for the printer.Less
This chapter compares the Quarto and Folio versions of Othello. The Quarto and Folio version of Othello represent two acting texts of the one play. The Quarto was printed either from the prompter's manuscript book, or from Shakespeare's autograph, or from a transcript of that autograph made by a professional scribe. The Folio version derives from Shakespeare's revision of his play. Possibly the removal of profanities and other changes were incorporated in an existing manuscript, but they are so many and complex as to make that very unlikely. The high probability is that Shakespeare wrote out the whole of Othello afresh, and the bibliographical evidence suggests, inconclusively, that a scribe copied what he wrote for the printer.
John Jones
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186885
- eISBN:
- 9780191674594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186885.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
While all thoughts about the second version in relation to the first are thoughts about Shakespeare at work, a kind of ghost play can be envisaged beyond the two Lears which might be reckoned a poor ...
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While all thoughts about the second version in relation to the first are thoughts about Shakespeare at work, a kind of ghost play can be envisaged beyond the two Lears which might be reckoned a poor thing compared with flesh-and blood Othello and Hamlet, but were better not compared with them at all. The improvement of Othello is a subject that twists and turns, especially in the last two acts, struggling for the air breathed by itself. Hamlet is vividly distinguished by the one-through-two (hendiadys) figure of speech; and, beyond that figure, by innumerable pairings, verbal, human, situational —a feature shared by Shakespeare's revision of the play. With King Lear, however, the frustration of bafflement is aroused by the study of the differences between the its two versions.Less
While all thoughts about the second version in relation to the first are thoughts about Shakespeare at work, a kind of ghost play can be envisaged beyond the two Lears which might be reckoned a poor thing compared with flesh-and blood Othello and Hamlet, but were better not compared with them at all. The improvement of Othello is a subject that twists and turns, especially in the last two acts, struggling for the air breathed by itself. Hamlet is vividly distinguished by the one-through-two (hendiadys) figure of speech; and, beyond that figure, by innumerable pairings, verbal, human, situational —a feature shared by Shakespeare's revision of the play. With King Lear, however, the frustration of bafflement is aroused by the study of the differences between the its two versions.
Alice Fox
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129882
- eISBN:
- 9780191671876
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129882.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses works of Shakespeare and the subsequent influences they had on those of Virginia Woolf as a writer. Although reluctant and resistant to reading Shakespeare, as she often deemed ...
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This chapter discusses works of Shakespeare and the subsequent influences they had on those of Virginia Woolf as a writer. Although reluctant and resistant to reading Shakespeare, as she often deemed his work as belonging to others, the chapter discusses the slow metamorphosis from Woolf's reluctance to Shakespeare, to a lifetime devotion of reading his plays and works. In late 1908, Woolf began reading five Shakespearian plays: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. Her reading of the plays led her to writing critical essays on the works of Shakespeare. Woolf found in the plays the perfect expression of ideas applicable to her own life, to society, and to the lives portrayed in her fiction. Among those of her novels which were founded on Shakespearian manner are Night and Day, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Waves, among others.Less
This chapter discusses works of Shakespeare and the subsequent influences they had on those of Virginia Woolf as a writer. Although reluctant and resistant to reading Shakespeare, as she often deemed his work as belonging to others, the chapter discusses the slow metamorphosis from Woolf's reluctance to Shakespeare, to a lifetime devotion of reading his plays and works. In late 1908, Woolf began reading five Shakespearian plays: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. Her reading of the plays led her to writing critical essays on the works of Shakespeare. Woolf found in the plays the perfect expression of ideas applicable to her own life, to society, and to the lives portrayed in her fiction. Among those of her novels which were founded on Shakespearian manner are Night and Day, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Waves, among others.
Heather Hirschfeld
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452741
- eISBN:
- 9780801470639
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452741.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an ...
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This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, the book examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, the book suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots “to set things right” in a world shorn of the prospect of “making enough” (satisfacere). The book traces today's use of “satisfaction”-as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange-to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love's Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.Less
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, the book examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, the book suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots “to set things right” in a world shorn of the prospect of “making enough” (satisfacere). The book traces today's use of “satisfaction”-as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange-to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love's Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.
Paul Hammond
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199572601
- eISBN:
- 9780191702099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572601.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
The superficial strangeness of Othello is evident from the start of the play; his deeper estrangement is brought about in the course of the tragedy; indeed, this is his tragedy. Othello is a drama of ...
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The superficial strangeness of Othello is evident from the start of the play; his deeper estrangement is brought about in the course of the tragedy; indeed, this is his tragedy. Othello is a drama of displacement, in which first Othello and then Desdemona are translated into a fictionalized time and space, estranged from and unreachable by the other characters. Gradually he is drawn by Iago, and draws himself (the agency is hard to determine in places, so closely are the two men linked) into an imagined world in which his wife Desdemona is adulterous. Notoriously, Iago works on Othello by making him construct the narrative of Desdemona's adultery himself out of hints which Iago supplies. Instead of any actual allegation, any charge relating to specific times, places, and people, Othello deploys a rhetoric which enlists heaven, moon, and wind as players in his fiction. This is an appropriately troubled form of agency and selfhood with which to conclude Othello's story, for his tragedy has entailed the blurring of the boundaries between his self and Iago.Less
The superficial strangeness of Othello is evident from the start of the play; his deeper estrangement is brought about in the course of the tragedy; indeed, this is his tragedy. Othello is a drama of displacement, in which first Othello and then Desdemona are translated into a fictionalized time and space, estranged from and unreachable by the other characters. Gradually he is drawn by Iago, and draws himself (the agency is hard to determine in places, so closely are the two men linked) into an imagined world in which his wife Desdemona is adulterous. Notoriously, Iago works on Othello by making him construct the narrative of Desdemona's adultery himself out of hints which Iago supplies. Instead of any actual allegation, any charge relating to specific times, places, and people, Othello deploys a rhetoric which enlists heaven, moon, and wind as players in his fiction. This is an appropriately troubled form of agency and selfhood with which to conclude Othello's story, for his tragedy has entailed the blurring of the boundaries between his self and Iago.
Andrew Hadfield
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199233656
- eISBN:
- 9780191696626
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199233656.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter explores a small sample of dramatic works to provide some sense of the manifold uses to which English Renaissance dramatists put the locations in which they chose to stage their plays. ...
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This chapter explores a small sample of dramatic works to provide some sense of the manifold uses to which English Renaissance dramatists put the locations in which they chose to stage their plays. It highlights four plays. First, it discusses Christopher Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris because it is one of only two plays which deal directly with the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, an event which was a defining moment in English Protestant consciousness, and which produced the horrified fear that similar apocalyptic violence could easily explode in England if measures were not taken to prevent it. Second, it outlines the multiple contexts of Othello, a play which represents the ideal republic of Venice as the last bastion of European civilization pitted against the lure and danger of the barbarous and exotic Orient, but which can also be read as an allegory of contemporary England struggling against the dangers of savage Ireland. Third, it shows that The Tempest—a text which has been subject to a heated battle between those who insist on the relevance of the play's colonial context and those who seek to deny any such relationship—can best be read as an attempt to negotiate between the question of European and colonial forms of government. Finally, the chapter argues that John Fletcher's The Island Princess represents Portuguese colonialism in order to discuss the issues confronting contemporary English colonists.Less
This chapter explores a small sample of dramatic works to provide some sense of the manifold uses to which English Renaissance dramatists put the locations in which they chose to stage their plays. It highlights four plays. First, it discusses Christopher Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris because it is one of only two plays which deal directly with the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, an event which was a defining moment in English Protestant consciousness, and which produced the horrified fear that similar apocalyptic violence could easily explode in England if measures were not taken to prevent it. Second, it outlines the multiple contexts of Othello, a play which represents the ideal republic of Venice as the last bastion of European civilization pitted against the lure and danger of the barbarous and exotic Orient, but which can also be read as an allegory of contemporary England struggling against the dangers of savage Ireland. Third, it shows that The Tempest—a text which has been subject to a heated battle between those who insist on the relevance of the play's colonial context and those who seek to deny any such relationship—can best be read as an attempt to negotiate between the question of European and colonial forms of government. Finally, the chapter argues that John Fletcher's The Island Princess represents Portuguese colonialism in order to discuss the issues confronting contemporary English colonists.
Hugh Grady
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198130048
- eISBN:
- 9780191671906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198130048.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Othello continues the exploration of the hidden connections between autonomous reason and desire which is evident in Troilus and ...
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Othello continues the exploration of the hidden connections between autonomous reason and desire which is evident in Troilus and Cressida, while it largely leaves aside the societal issues of political power and the market. The play probes the cultural codings of gender and male possessiveness, the status of colour prejudice and toleration in Jacobean England, issues of identity and the alien, and the epistemology of seeing, hearing, and believing. Othello is considered one of the most complex of William Shakespeare's tragedies. The figure of Iago is a focal point for one of Shakespeare's most incisive and revealing delineations of the thematic complex known as reification, while Othello is a powerful representative of the new forms of subjectivity arising in connection with the new impersonality of reified society. Iago's discourse acts out a logic that presciently recapitulates that dialectic of enlightenment defined in the twentieth century by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno as well as key components of the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault's related theory.Less
Othello continues the exploration of the hidden connections between autonomous reason and desire which is evident in Troilus and Cressida, while it largely leaves aside the societal issues of political power and the market. The play probes the cultural codings of gender and male possessiveness, the status of colour prejudice and toleration in Jacobean England, issues of identity and the alien, and the epistemology of seeing, hearing, and believing. Othello is considered one of the most complex of William Shakespeare's tragedies. The figure of Iago is a focal point for one of Shakespeare's most incisive and revealing delineations of the thematic complex known as reification, while Othello is a powerful representative of the new forms of subjectivity arising in connection with the new impersonality of reified society. Iago's discourse acts out a logic that presciently recapitulates that dialectic of enlightenment defined in the twentieth century by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno as well as key components of the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault's related theory.
Michael Neill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183860
- eISBN:
- 9780191674112
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183860.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Near the beginning of the great temptation scene which determines the course of his tragedy, Othello makes an extraordinary, impossible demand of Iago: ‘If thou dost love me | Show me thy thought’. ...
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Near the beginning of the great temptation scene which determines the course of his tragedy, Othello makes an extraordinary, impossible demand of Iago: ‘If thou dost love me | Show me thy thought’. This chapter analyses death and discovery in Othello and explores the dynamic of the temptation scene, as well as Othello's scopic longing aroused in him by Iago's self-presentation as a man with something to hide. The effect is to foster in the Moor the horrifying sense that it is his own secret self that is being opened to the scandal of public view. The preoccupation of the temptation scene with interpreting what Othello, in a telling oxymoron, calls ‘close dilations working from the heart’ — enigmatic physiological signs through which occulted interior motives are exposed to view — is exceptionally intense, but by no means exceptional; for no play in the canon is more obsessively concerned than Othello with the idea of laying open.Less
Near the beginning of the great temptation scene which determines the course of his tragedy, Othello makes an extraordinary, impossible demand of Iago: ‘If thou dost love me | Show me thy thought’. This chapter analyses death and discovery in Othello and explores the dynamic of the temptation scene, as well as Othello's scopic longing aroused in him by Iago's self-presentation as a man with something to hide. The effect is to foster in the Moor the horrifying sense that it is his own secret self that is being opened to the scandal of public view. The preoccupation of the temptation scene with interpreting what Othello, in a telling oxymoron, calls ‘close dilations working from the heart’ — enigmatic physiological signs through which occulted interior motives are exposed to view — is exceptionally intense, but by no means exceptional; for no play in the canon is more obsessively concerned than Othello with the idea of laying open.
Michael Neill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183860
- eISBN:
- 9780191674112
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183860.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Othello's anatomising gaze and its complementary fascination with both psychological interiors and the secrets of the social body are extended and taken in new directions by The ...
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Othello's anatomising gaze and its complementary fascination with both psychological interiors and the secrets of the social body are extended and taken in new directions by The Changeling. Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's domestic tragedy was written eighteen years after Othello, but significantly in the very year that saw the publication of the first Quarto of William Shakespeare's play; and in both the details of its execution and its larger metaphoric structure it often appears to be a self-conscious rewriting of the earlier tragedy, adapting and recombining elements of its model to create a disturbing sense of familiarity-in-strangeness. The main plot of The Changeling shifts attention from the racial anxieties at the centre of the earlier tragedy to the bitterness about rank and status evident at its margin. Like Othello, The Changeling is structured around tropes of opening, discovery, and hidden secrets.Less
Othello's anatomising gaze and its complementary fascination with both psychological interiors and the secrets of the social body are extended and taken in new directions by The Changeling. Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's domestic tragedy was written eighteen years after Othello, but significantly in the very year that saw the publication of the first Quarto of William Shakespeare's play; and in both the details of its execution and its larger metaphoric structure it often appears to be a self-conscious rewriting of the earlier tragedy, adapting and recombining elements of its model to create a disturbing sense of familiarity-in-strangeness. The main plot of The Changeling shifts attention from the racial anxieties at the centre of the earlier tragedy to the bitterness about rank and status evident at its margin. Like Othello, The Changeling is structured around tropes of opening, discovery, and hidden secrets.
Robert S. Miola
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112648
- eISBN:
- 9780191670831
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112648.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Cooper's Thesaurus explains how furor is used to refer to ‘a vehement concitation or sturrynge of the minde,’ and it is observable that both Tyrant and Revenge tragedies exude this theme. Furor, in ...
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Cooper's Thesaurus explains how furor is used to refer to ‘a vehement concitation or sturrynge of the minde,’ and it is observable that both Tyrant and Revenge tragedies exude this theme. Furor, in such tragedies, is what drives certain characters to eventful scelus and even instances of self-exaltation. Renaissance authors have made use of this concept in the two subgenres of Senecan plays since these can effectively, and even perhaps simultaneously, express a character's great passions through either heroism or delusion. Furor, as expressed by a third Renaissance genre, illustrates a code of feeling and the articulation of ideas. This chapter carefully looks into two of Shakespeare's famous works — Othello and King Lear — and how these concentrate on the issue of Senecan furor.Less
Cooper's Thesaurus explains how furor is used to refer to ‘a vehement concitation or sturrynge of the minde,’ and it is observable that both Tyrant and Revenge tragedies exude this theme. Furor, in such tragedies, is what drives certain characters to eventful scelus and even instances of self-exaltation. Renaissance authors have made use of this concept in the two subgenres of Senecan plays since these can effectively, and even perhaps simultaneously, express a character's great passions through either heroism or delusion. Furor, as expressed by a third Renaissance genre, illustrates a code of feeling and the articulation of ideas. This chapter carefully looks into two of Shakespeare's famous works — Othello and King Lear — and how these concentrate on the issue of Senecan furor.
Derek Hughes
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119746
- eISBN:
- 9780191671203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119746.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The first tragedy known to have been premiered after the Revolution was Nathaniel Lee's anti-Catholic pot-boiler The Massacre of Paris, written during the Exclusion Crisis and banned. Here ‘A hundred ...
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The first tragedy known to have been premiered after the Revolution was Nathaniel Lee's anti-Catholic pot-boiler The Massacre of Paris, written during the Exclusion Crisis and banned. Here ‘A hundred thousand Souls for justice call’, but they cry in vain, for, as so often in Lee, the innocent die and the wicked remain unpunished. However, in post-Revolution Whig tragedy monarchy and justice were no longer irreconcilable. The change first appears in George Powell's unimpressive Othello clone The Treacherous Brothers, in which the chastity of a virtuous queen is slandered by two villainous brothers of low social place, but is providentially vindicated in time to prevent her execution. In the many previous Restoration imitations of Othello, the villain had always been an essential part of the order that he subverted; but then renewed confidence in the social order meant that the outsider regained meaning as a source of evil.Less
The first tragedy known to have been premiered after the Revolution was Nathaniel Lee's anti-Catholic pot-boiler The Massacre of Paris, written during the Exclusion Crisis and banned. Here ‘A hundred thousand Souls for justice call’, but they cry in vain, for, as so often in Lee, the innocent die and the wicked remain unpunished. However, in post-Revolution Whig tragedy monarchy and justice were no longer irreconcilable. The change first appears in George Powell's unimpressive Othello clone The Treacherous Brothers, in which the chastity of a virtuous queen is slandered by two villainous brothers of low social place, but is providentially vindicated in time to prevent her execution. In the many previous Restoration imitations of Othello, the villain had always been an essential part of the order that he subverted; but then renewed confidence in the social order meant that the outsider regained meaning as a source of evil.
Helen Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199248865
- eISBN:
- 9780191719394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248865.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The most interesting uses of magic and the supernatural in romance are those where potential wonder at the magic is displaced by wonder at the virtue of the hero (as in some lais of Marie de France); ...
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The most interesting uses of magic and the supernatural in romance are those where potential wonder at the magic is displaced by wonder at the virtue of the hero (as in some lais of Marie de France); or, alternatively, where magic fails to work, in parallel to the hero’s failure to be outstanding (as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). This subversion of the supernatural by human agency is too counter-intuitive to become an inherited element in story transmission, and it is reinvented by a series of major romances. It resists adaptation into allegory — in the Faerie Queene, the magic is more plot-oriented, and it works; but Shakespeare exploits it in a number of plays, including Othello. The strong association of magic with the forbidden adds an element of tension to all these usages.Less
The most interesting uses of magic and the supernatural in romance are those where potential wonder at the magic is displaced by wonder at the virtue of the hero (as in some lais of Marie de France); or, alternatively, where magic fails to work, in parallel to the hero’s failure to be outstanding (as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). This subversion of the supernatural by human agency is too counter-intuitive to become an inherited element in story transmission, and it is reinvented by a series of major romances. It resists adaptation into allegory — in the Faerie Queene, the magic is more plot-oriented, and it works; but Shakespeare exploits it in a number of plays, including Othello. The strong association of magic with the forbidden adds an element of tension to all these usages.
John Beer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199574018
- eISBN:
- 9780191723100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574018.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Coleridge's reading of Shakespeare's poetic works is devoted particularly to the human and literary insights they contain and their relation both to his theories about the nature of genius and ...
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Coleridge's reading of Shakespeare's poetic works is devoted particularly to the human and literary insights they contain and their relation both to his theories about the nature of genius and sensibility and to Shakespeare's supposed awareness of differing levels of consciousness in his characters.Less
Coleridge's reading of Shakespeare's poetic works is devoted particularly to the human and literary insights they contain and their relation both to his theories about the nature of genius and sensibility and to Shakespeare's supposed awareness of differing levels of consciousness in his characters.
Eric Langley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199541232
- eISBN:
- 9780191716072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541232.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The study concludes with consideration of the deaths of Othello and Desdemona, as well as examination of suicides from elsewhere on the Renaissance stage (in works by Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, ...
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The study concludes with consideration of the deaths of Othello and Desdemona, as well as examination of suicides from elsewhere on the Renaissance stage (in works by Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Webster, and Marlowe, amongst others). Iago's poisonous, hostile tactics, enforcing mental division on his victims, is understood in relation to wider period notions of self‐reflexive identity as described by Montaigne and ultimately as articulated by Descartes. This chapter identifies the significance of both narcissism and suicide in the history of geminative subjectivityLess
The study concludes with consideration of the deaths of Othello and Desdemona, as well as examination of suicides from elsewhere on the Renaissance stage (in works by Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Webster, and Marlowe, amongst others). Iago's poisonous, hostile tactics, enforcing mental division on his victims, is understood in relation to wider period notions of self‐reflexive identity as described by Montaigne and ultimately as articulated by Descartes. This chapter identifies the significance of both narcissism and suicide in the history of geminative subjectivity
Yogita Goyal
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479829590
- eISBN:
- 9781479819676
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479829590.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter takes up questions of literary ventriloquism and surrogate authorship that always plagued the slave narrative and are imaginatively reinvented by such black Atlantic writers as Toni ...
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This chapter takes up questions of literary ventriloquism and surrogate authorship that always plagued the slave narrative and are imaginatively reinvented by such black Atlantic writers as Toni Morrison and Caryl Phillips in their revisiting of Shakespeare’s Othello. To do so, they return to the founding scene of the “Talking Book” of the Atlantic slave narrative, where the slave worries that the master’s book will not speak to him or her. Staging a range of responses to analogy, these writers place slavery next to colonialism and the Holocaust, renovating but also complicating a classic postcolonial project of writing back to the empire in order to decolonize the mind. Their explorations return us to the meaning of slavery itself, its singularity, its relation to narrative, and to modern conceptions of racial formation. Such efforts transform the classic project of writing back to the text of Western authority, evenly negotiating the pull of influence, intertextuality, and adaptation.Less
This chapter takes up questions of literary ventriloquism and surrogate authorship that always plagued the slave narrative and are imaginatively reinvented by such black Atlantic writers as Toni Morrison and Caryl Phillips in their revisiting of Shakespeare’s Othello. To do so, they return to the founding scene of the “Talking Book” of the Atlantic slave narrative, where the slave worries that the master’s book will not speak to him or her. Staging a range of responses to analogy, these writers place slavery next to colonialism and the Holocaust, renovating but also complicating a classic postcolonial project of writing back to the empire in order to decolonize the mind. Their explorations return us to the meaning of slavery itself, its singularity, its relation to narrative, and to modern conceptions of racial formation. Such efforts transform the classic project of writing back to the text of Western authority, evenly negotiating the pull of influence, intertextuality, and adaptation.
