Othello Critical Quotes Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards based on critical quotes from 'Othello'.

The Othello music

Quality of exaggerated, false rhetoric.

John Leonard's view of Othello

Idea that a weakness runs through the Othello music.

Fintan O’Toole on Iago and Othello

Iago and Othello are very close and start to melt into each other.

Fintan O’Toole on successful tragedy

Tragedy occurs when there's tension between two sets of values or world views, and tragic figures are caught in the middle.

Fintan O’Toole on tragic figures

The central tragic figure loses a sense of himself and his grip on his own identity.

Fintan O’Toole on racism in Othello

Racism has entered Othello’s mind and soul, becoming an integral part of him.

Marjorie Garber on Iago

Iago speaks from a moral and literal darkness.

Coleridge on Iago

The idea that Iago possesses motiveless malignity.

Emma Smith on Othello and Desdemona's sex life

The entire drama is structured by a voyeuristic preoccupation with Othello and Desdemona’s sex life.

Emma Smith on the play's ending

The play ends on a fissure, an incompatible religious and ethnic split played out on the impossible identity of its central protagonist.

Iago

Iago as ‘the joker of the pack’.

Thomas Heywood on comedies vs. tragedies

Comedies begin in trouble and end in peace; tragedies begin in calms and end in tempest.

Richard Mallette on Iago's methods

Iago’s polemics is modelled on and distorts methods prescribed by sixteenth-century sermon theory.

M. Crane on Iago's language

Whenever he is alone, he drops into the verse of the Machiavellian villain.

Sean McEvoy on Othello's tragedy

Othello’s tragedy is that he lives according to superseded stories and ideology, as a chivalric warrior in a world run by money and self-interest.

F. R. Leavis on Iago and Othello

Iago’s success reflects Othello's readiness to respond; 'The essential traitor is within the gates.'

Kiernan Ryan on the handkerchief

The handkerchief draws a parallel between Bianca and Desdemona and Emilia, symbolizing the fragility of marriage.

Stephen Greenblatt on Othello's identity

Othello’s identity depends on a constant performance of ‘his’ story.

Stephen Greenblatt on the moor

The moor represents both the institution and the alien, the conqueror and the infidel.

Stephen Greenblatt on Iago

Iago can refashion an identity that has been created as a story.

Domestic tragedies dramatized

ways in which the patriarchal centre did not always hold.

Marjorie Garber

A failure to reconcile public and private feelings leaves Othello with no space for self-knowledge.

Ayanna Thompson on Iago

Iago is the devil Othello deserves, crime by suggestion.

Kiernan Ryan on storytelling

He who controls the storytelling controls the world in Othello.

Ayanna Thompson Racism

Racism is exploited by Iago, but he isn't necessarily motivated by racist hatred.

Emma Smith on Desdemona

She goes from being a person to being a prop, dominated by a male narrative.

Granville Barker:

A tragedy without meaning.

John Wain on Othello and Desdemona

Othello does not see Desdemona as a real girl, but as something magical that happened to him.

John E. Seaman on racial difference

Racial difference is the outward symbol of his isolation, not what makes him terrifying.

Caryl Phillips tragedy

Othello’s fall is a version of Adam’s and Desdemona’s is an inversion of Eve’s.

Anya Loomba on Othello's love

Othello’s love of Desdemona is the love of possession; she is a prize.

Anya Loomba Moors

Othello can only be read against a collective category called Moors.

Emma Smith Jealousy

Male jealousy hinges upon racial difference as well as upon female infidelity.

Arthur M. Eastman on Iago and Othello

Iago is able to find his way to Othello's heart by looking within his own.

Kenneth Burke on Othello's stake

ownership in the profoundest sense of ownership

Matt Simpson

Emilia dies in service of the truth and underscores Desdemona’s lack of knowledge in the world.

John Bayley on Emilia

Emilia is ‘the mouthpiece of repressed femineity’

A. C. Bradley on Cassio

There is something very lovable about Cassio.

Graham Bradshaw on Iago

Iago is Shakespeare’s most extraordinary example of a surrogate dramatist.

Kenneth Muir on Othello's flaw

Othello’s fatal flaw was his credulity.

Helen Gardner stranger

He is a stranger, a man of alien race.