Othello A05 flashcards

What is Honigmann’s argument?

the reception of Iago provokes conflicting emotions as his comedic yet sinister portrayal divides our moral compass and thus perception of him

Honigmann: “Iago…is anything but

straightforward”

Honigmann: “he is the play’s…”

cheif humourist

Honigmann: “since his victims lack humour…”

Iago appeals to us as more amusing

Honigmann: “his humour makes him…”

seem cleverer than his victims

Honigmann: “Iago excells in…”

short-term tactics, not in long-term strategy

Honingmann: “despite his cleverness…”

he has neither felt nor understood the spiritual impulses that bind ordinary human beings together, loyalty, friendship, respect, compassion – in a word, love

Honingmann: “Emilia’s love (of Desdemona) is Iago’s"..”

undoing

what is Leavis’ argument?

Othello’s sufferings in the play are partly a consequence of his self-dramatisation, he refuses to learn from his sufferings preferring to focus on the ‘performance’

Leavis: “he has discovered his mistake but…”

there is no tragic self-discovery

Leavis: “he is ruined, but…”

he is the same Othello in whose essential make-up the tragedy lay: the tragedy doesn’t involve the idea of the hero’s learning through suffering

Leavis: Othello’s suicide “is a superb…”

coup de théâtre

What is Loomba’s argument?

Othello both reinforces and questions early modern stereotypes of black people and Muslims. Also Venice as a model and warning to England

Loomba: “Iago’s machinations are effective because…”

Othello is predisposed to believing his pronouncements about the inherent duplicity of women, and the necessary fragility of an ‘unnatural’ relationship between a young, white, well-born woman and an older black soldier

Loomba: “Othello is a victim of…”

racial beliefs precisely because he becomes an agent of misogynist ones

Loomba: “Venetian civility has been built by…”

letting in the very foreigners who now threaten to undermine it at a different level

Andrew Hatfield calls Venice a "…”

critical utopian space

What is Kastan’s main argument?

that Shakespeare’s tragedies fail to conform to the conventional argument of what a tragedy is as outlined by Chaucer

Kastan: “the … but not its cause”

inescapable trajectory of the tragic action

Kastan: “the inescapable trajectory of the tragic action but not its …”

cause

Kastan: “For Shakespeare…”

the uncertainty is the point

Kastan: “Shakespeare’s tragedies provoke…

questions about the cause of the pain and loss

Kastan: “There is no such thing as Shakespearian tragedy: …”

there are only Shakespearian tragedies…Shakespearian modifies tragedy 

Kastan: “Tragedy, for Shakespeare, is the genre of …”

uncompensated suffering

What is Nutall’s main arguemnt?

The tension between pleasure and pain in tragic drama, people enjoy the uncomfortable albeit somewhat unconsciously, which is why tragedies are so popular

Nutall: “If we were all wicked, …”

there would perhaps be no problem

Nutall: “In the tragic theatre suffering and death are perceived as matter for grief and fear, after which it seems that grief and fear become in their turn…”

matter for enjoyment

Nutall: “one can enjoy an activity or process without at any point thinking consciously,….”

‘I am enjoying this’, or ‘this is very agreeable’

What is Bradley’s main argument?

Shakespeare’s tragedies follow definitions of the genre offered by the ancient Greek writer Aristotle where the play centres on a character of high rank and exceptional qualities who undergoes a reversal of fortune that leads to his own death and to a more general calamity

Bradley: “no play at the end of which the hero remains alive is,….”`

in the full Shakespearean sense, a tragedy

Bradely: “It is, in fact, essentially a tale of …”

suffering and calamity conducting to death. The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional

Bradely: “man is blind and helpless, the …”

plaything of an inscrutable power…a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride

Bradely: "His fall produces a …”

sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man…which no tale of private life can possibly rival”

What is Mack’s argument?

Shakespeare deliberately condemns his tragic hero to madness as a form of both punishment (as according to societal/religious rules and orders) but also as a mechanism to state the truth that may be rejected/overlooked in other forms

Mack: “The excess of any passion approached…”

madness

Mack: “madness, when actually exhibited was…”

dramatically useful

Mack: “madness to some degree…”

a punishment or doom

Mack: “Shakespeare himself…”

perhaps – who, having been given the power to see the ‘truth’, can convey it only through poetry – what we commonly call a ‘fiction’, and dismiss

Honingman: “Dramatic perspective can…”

even make us the villain’s complices: he confides in us”

Honingman: “Iago’s convienient…”

masks, not the inner man, and may blind readers to Iago’s essential sadism”

Honingman: “his humour either intends to…”

give pain or allows him to bask in the sense of his own superiority; very rarely is it at his own expense

Honingman: “he enjoys a…”

godlike sense of power”

Honingman: “dramatic perspective compels us to…”

see with his eyes, and share his jokes”

Leavis: “the noble Othello is now seen as…”

tragically pathetic, and he sees himself as pathetic too

Leavis: “the fact that Othello tends to sentimentalise…”

should be the reverse of a reason for our sentimentalising too”

Leavis: “Othello’s…nature”

simple

Leavis: “self-dramatization as…”

un self-comprehending

Leavis: “contemplating the spectacle of himself…”

Othello is overcome with the pathos of it”

Loomba: “Othello is both a fantasy of…”

interracial love and social tolerance, and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence”

Loomba: “Location, skin colour and class are seen to add up to…”

nature itself

Loomba: “Ideologies, the play tells us, only work because…”

they are not entirely external to us”

Loomba: “black-skinned people were usually typed as…”

godless, bestial, and hideous, fit only to be saved, and in early modern Europe) enslaved, by Christians

Loomba: “the English saw Venice not simply as a place for…”

female deviance, but also as an ideal republic and hub of international trade

Loomba: “Venice became an ideal that was invoked by English writers subtly to…”

critique domestic affairs

Loomba: “a myth of Venice in England which…”

exalted the city-state as an open but ordered society, a model of civility

Loomba: “here we see a tension between the…”

state and family, although the two were so often equated in contemporary political rhetoric

Loomba: “England was increasingly hostile…”

to foreigners, both officially and at a popular level, and London had witnessed several major riots against foreign residents and artisan”

Loomba: “both blacks and Muslims were…”

regarded as given to unnatural sexual and domestic practices, as highly emotional and even irrational, and prone to anger and jealously; above all, both existed outside of the Christian fold