English Literature: Othello Critical Analysis

A.C Bradley – “His fall produces a sense of contrast…” “of the powerlessness of man, of the omnipotence… of Fortune or Fate, which no… private life can possibly rival”
A.C. Bradley- “It is, in fact, essentially…” “A tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death”
David Scott Kastan – “(Chaucer’s) definition is perhaps…” “So limited as to seem obvious and unhelpful, especially in our hypertheoretical age”
David Scott Kastan – “Is the tragic motor…” “Human error or capricious fate?”
David Scott Kastan – what’s at the centre of these plays? “It is the emotional truth of struggle… That is at the centre of these plays”
David Scott Kastan – Suffering has… “desolating controlling logic”
E.A.J Honigmann – Iago, “he enjoys…” “a Godlike sense of power”
Dr Johnson – “The character of Iago is so conducted…” “that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised”
W.H. Auden – Iago, is the… “Joker in the pack”
F.R. Leavis – “He remains the same Othello;…” “He has discovered his mistake, but there is no tragic self-discovery”
Epigrammatic (Othello) Quotable or wise sounding
coup de theatre Sudden turn of events
F.R. Leavis – “The final blow is as real as the blow it re-enacts, and the historic intent symbolically affirms the reality:…” “Othello dies belonging to the world of action in which his true part lay”
Ania Loomba – “The real tragedy of the play lies in the fact that…” “these hierarchies are not external to the pair”
Ania Loomba – “Iago’s machinations are effective because…” “Othello is predisposed to believing… the necessary fragility of an ‘unnatural’ relationship”
Ania Loombra – contextually, “England was…” “Increasingly hostile to foreigners”
September 6, 2019