Selected byChoicemagazine as an Outstanding Academic Title "Speak of me as I am," Othello, the Moor of Venice, bids in the play that bears his name. Yet many have found it impossible to speak of his ...ethnicity with any certainty. What did it mean to be a Moor in the early modern period? In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when England was expanding its reach across the globe, the Moor became a central character on the English stage. InThe Battle of Alcazar,Titus Andronicus,Lust's Dominion, andOthello, the figure of the Moor took definition from multiple geographies, histories, religions, and skin colors. Rather than casting these variables as obstacles to our-and England's-understanding of the Moor's racial and cultural identity, Emily C. Bartels argues that they are what make the Moor so interesting and important in the face of growing globalization, both in the early modern period and in our own. InSpeaking of the Moor, Bartels sets the early modern Moor plays beside contemporaneous texts that embed Moorish figures within England's historical record-Richard Hakluyt'sPrincipal Navigations, Queen Elizabeth's letters proposing the deportation of England's "blackamoors," and John Pory's translation ofThe History and Description of Africa. Her book uncovers the surprising complexity of England's negotiation and accommodation of difference at the end of the Elizabethan era.
This paper investigates Gholām-Hossein Sāedi's appropriation of Shakespeare's Othello in his seminal play Othello in Wonderland. The play is worth investigating since it disentangles itself from the ...Shakespearean logocentric tradition to depict the plights of Sāedi's fellow artists at a critical point in Iranian history. It is argued that Sāedi's self-exile following the 1979 Revolution enabled him to present a critique of censorship and the authoritarian demands of the hegemonic power of the time. Sāedi's artistic concerns, which are temporally and locally constrained, result in an autonomous Othello in which different discourses compete with each other in a class struggle among members of a theatrical group, agents of a hegemonic power and Sāedi the playwright. While this paper is principally concerned with how Sāedi's adaptation deterritorializes the source text to challenge the official power and unfold marginalised voices, it finally discusses the applicability of Sāedi's criticism to modern times.
Ever since Shakespeare was introduced to Japan in the late nineteenth century, the Bard has been regarded as an icon of the modernized West, a teacher of wisdom, an authoritative source of knowledge, ...and a master to whom utmost respect was due. Tragedies, a genre invoking solemnity and thought to befit a serious playwright, dominated the scenes of early Shakespeare reception. Shakespearean transadaptations in Japan often omitted bawdy language in conformance with the Bard's solemn stature, so that the ennobled Shakespearean language could remain ＂proper.＂ During such a period, a unique comedy writer, Tarokaja Masuda (1875-1953), went against the grain by making Othello humorous, accessible, satirical, and full of slapstick. This paper brings attention to Masuda's forgotten New Othello (1907), a comic spin-off derived from one of the most renowned box-office hits of Shakespeare in early twentieth-century Japan-a localized Othello (1903) adapted by Suiin Emi (1869-1934) and produced by Otojiro Kawakami (1864-1911). This paper argues for New Othello's contribution to the development of comedy as a worthy genre as well as its revision of creative approaches to Shakespeare in Japan. New Othello not only embodies the malleability of generic perception, but also familiarizes and popularizes Shakespeare for a wider, entertainment-seeking audience. Last but not least, New Othello manifests the social capacity of comedies by demonstrating the transformative power of trust and love. New Othello further grants a happy ending to a cross-cultural and cross-class marriage in stark contrast to Shakespeare's Othello, wherein inter-racial and cross-class relationships could not last. The successful productions of this neglected play in Taiwan (1909) and in Tokyo (2018) bore witness to New Othello's theatrical cogency and sustained legacy, currently unexplored by the academic community.
Literature, which awakens esthetic pleasures in the human soul, has as its theme man and life, and psychology has as its theme sensation, thought, and behavior. In both fields, imagination, the ...importance of the subconscious, the method of association, and similar methods of investigation are used. In the studies of narratives, literature in the broadest sense benefits from psychology in terms of method, and psychology benefits from literature in terms of the effects of the works on the human mind. The main axis of our study is to evaluate folk songs, which are anonymous types of folk literature, on the basis of psychological data within the framework of this relationship. Cases that were the source of each genre in the context of the subject and theme can be accepted as human behavior and artistic reflection of this behavioral model. Since man has existed, he has established his relationship with the environment first with the basic impulses and then with the cultural achievements he has acquired. Jealousy is one of the most important factors that influence these relationships. If we approach folk songs from a thematic point of view, the tragic consequences of the impact of the events caused by pathological jealousy on the community spirit become clearly visible. For this reason, it is necessary to consider the psychological depth of the emotion that had such an impact on a genre and its effects on literary and artistic works previously written or created. Any impulse becomes art, and the phenomenon used in art becomes the name of this impulse.
Paul Cefalu argues that Shakespearean characters raise timely questions about the relationship between cognition and consciousness and often defy our assumptions about "normal" cognition. The book ...will appeal to scholars and students interested in both the virtues and limitations of cognitive literary criticism.
A Crux in Othello Merriam, Thomas
Notes and queries,
09/2019, Letnik:
66, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Merriam focuses on the crux in Shakespeare's drama Othello. The passage consists of three assertions of Cassio in praise of Desdemona - numbered here (1) to (3). In common with such expressions in ...the Old Testament, the first two express the same; their wording differs only with the Folio's quirks.
How do we explain the presence and activity of evil in the world? There are several possible answers to this question in early modern England. In Othello (first performed circa 1604), Shakespeare ...engages with competing accounts of what evil is, where it comes from, how it works, and why it is permitted.2 Revising a critical commonplace, I suggest that Iago’s evil is neither Manichaean nor an expression of nonbeing. Rather, Iago works in and around the epistemological gray areas found in the privative theology of evil, and between conditional and indicative grammatical moods.
Othello has an effect of education that differs from Shakespeare's three other tragedies, revealing the deep culture of human life and demonstrating Shakespeare's reflections on human ethics. It ...inherits the tragic tradition and innovates the theme of tragedy with vivid examples of that time, showing the deep relationship between tragedy and ethics. The reasons for the formation of the tragedy Othello are inextricably linked to the ethical environment of Venice in the 16th century. From the perspective of ethical literary criticism, in fact, Othello is an ethical tragedy arising from ethical confusion and ethical disorder. This paper explores the causes of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, taking the text as an example, and finds that racial ethics and gender ethics play a decisive role in the formation of the tragedy Othello. Keywords: Othello; ethical literary criticism; cause of tragedy; ethical value; ethical order phrase omitted
This work expands upon recent historical analysis of Shakespeare's 'Othello', which has foregrounded issues of race, colonialism, and feminism, in order to show how the discourse of religion might ...affect our understanding of this play. It specifically looks at how the discourse of Catholicism, itself a highly contested topic in Shakespeare's world, affects our understanding of Desdemona, whom the play so directly compares to perhaps the most divisive and controversial figure of the entire 'Reformation' period, Mary the Mother of God. Explaining how this comparison is developed and clarified by Shakespeare, this book explores the difference our interpretation of Desdemona's 'Marian' dimension might make to critical understanding of the tragedy of 'Othello'.
Including twenty-one groundbreaking chapters that examine one of Shakespeare's most complex tragedies. Othello: Critical Essays explores issues of friendship and fealty, love and betrayal, race and ...gender issues, and much more.
"Kolin's article is a masterful survey and in itself makes the book worthwhile. He is especially comprehensive and even-handed with the most recent era. Anyone undertaking the study of this play should begin here." William Procter Williams, Shakespeare Bulletin
"...unlike many collections of Shakespeare criticism, this volume does not include well-worn essays, but rather new, thought-provoking selections that extend the critical discourse; open up the play's connection to such diverse concepts as feminism, Marxism, new historicism, and semiotics; consider the play's relevance to broad cultural issues; and examine challenging new stagings. . .This title will be the go-to book on the play for scholars and theater practitioners, offering value for both students at the beginning of their Shakespeare study and scholars at an advanced level of study." Choice
"Professor Kolin has given us more than yet another addition to Shakespeareana. This volume of essays is stimulating and sound both in its scholarly conclusinos as well as in its noteworthy considerations of both the critical and the theatrical. These complementary assessments increase its value as a resource to both critics and producers of Shakespeare." Sidney Berger, University of Houston/Houston Shakespeare Festival, Journal of Drama Theory and Criticism
"Put together these essays are complementary rather than competing, the sign of an editor with a wide vision and critical horizon." Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, University of Cape Town, The Shakespeare Newsletter
"In this exceptional collection of essays on Othello, twenty authors range across a vast landscape of critical practice, regularly startling us with insights about this play and performances of it. Where else can one read in side-by-side essays a lucid account of the textual intricacies of the quarto and folio editions of the play and then a compelling study of stage violence, citing actual productions? Roderigo, a dangerous guide for the audience; Iago, a master actor in a metatheatrical allegory; and Desdemona, caught in conflicting matrimonial models, all emerge in astute new critical understanding. Philip Kolin deserves our thanks for initiating and producing this volume that will compel every serious student of Shakespeare to think anew about the joys and terror of this spare and frightening tragedy." David M. Bergeron, University of Kansas
"This is a well-organized, comprehensive, and often innovative account of issues in current Othello criticism. The volume includes a refreshing array of critical and ideological perspectives in essays which are uniformly scholarly and thorough in their treatment of the subject matter. The collection makes clear that while Othello may well be a play for all times, it is especially a play for our times when questions of racial and religious difference and the relation between the private individual and the state beset us with renewed and ever-more urgent intensity." Dympna Callaghan, Syracuse University
"In this fascinating collection, some of today's liveliest and most distinguished Shakespeareans engage with Othello from across a broad spectrum of historical and theoretical perspectives. Along with Kolin's substantial introductory survey of the play's critical and performance history, this book is bound to reinforce Othello's extraordinary current appeal, not just to scholars and students of Shakespeare but to non-academic readers, theatrical audiences and moviegoers as well." Edward Pechter, Concordia
1. Darkness Made Visible: A survey of Othello in Criticism and on Stage Philip C. Kolin 2. The Audience's Role in Othello Hugh Macrae Richmond 3. White Faces, Black-Face" The Production of "Race" in Othello Sujata Iyengar 4. Images of White Identity in Othello Peter Erickson 5. 'Words and Performance": Roderigo and the Mixed Dramaturgy of Race and Gender in Othello John R. Ford 6. The Curse of Cush: Othello's Judaic Ancestry James R. Andreas 7. Relating Things to the State: "The State" and the Subject of Othello Thomas Moisan 8. Venetian Ideology or Transversal Power? Iago's Motives and the Means by which Othello Falls Bryan Reynolds & Joseph Fitzpatrick 9. Othello: Portrait of a Marriage David Bevington 10. "Truly, an Obedient Lady": Desdemona, Emilia, and the Doctrine of Obedience in Othello Sara Deats 11. Morality, Ethics, and the Failure of Love in Othello John Gronbeck-Tedesco 12. Keeping Faith: Water Imagery and Religious Diversity in Othello Clifford Ronan 13. Representing Othello: Early Modern Jury Trials and the Equitable Judgments of Tragedy Nicholas Moschovakis 14. Othello Among the Sonnets James Schiffer 15. The "O" in Othello: Tropes of Damnation and Nothingness Dabiel J. Vitkus 16. Trumpeting and "Seeled" Eyes: A Semiotics of Eyeconography in Othello LaRue Love Sloan 17. "Work on My Medicine": Physiology and Consumption in Othello Mary Lux 18. Reading Othello Backwards Jay L. Halio 19. "The Mystery of the Early Othello Texts" Scott McMillin 20. "My Cue to Fight": Stage Violence in Othello Francis X. Kuhn 21. An Interview with Kent Thompson, Artistic Director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival Philip C. Kolin
Philip Kolin is Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the series editor of the Shakespeare Criticism series.
