A Postcolonialist Analysis of the Tragedy of Othello
A Postcolonialist Analysis of the Tragedy of Othello
Syllabus
1. Introduction Different people have different opinions towards the tragedy of Othello. Personally, I am deeply impressed by the racial bias in this tragedy; therefore I try to analyze it from the view of postcolonialism. As you know, the tragedy of Othello has a close relation with Othello’s blackness identity. In the play, the viperous Iago makes full use of Othello’s special Moor identity, which is different from the dominant society, to enrage Desdemona’s father, Brabantio. Then Iago also finds ways to make Othello himself more and more conscious of his blackness identity which result in his self-humiliation. Consequently, love between Othello and Desdemona is gradually damaged due to Othello’s suspicion and blind trust on Iago. Othello is the victim of cross-cultural power plays to some extent. Or, we can say that the tragedy of Othello can be classified as the paradigm of postcolonialism, and the reading of race.
2. Body
1) Brief introduction on postcolonialism As a school, postcolonialism, attempts to look at how texts translate both within and across cultures. It desires to break apart Eurocentric conceptions “hegemonic ‘normality’” and to draw long-lost attention to the voices, societies, and histories that have silenced. That process has opened up cultural voices to a sort of cross-cultural dialogism, recovered traces of the Other in the self, the self in the Other, and emphasized the flexibility and negotiability of cultural borders. Whereas, although postcolonial critiques have begun to read difference into identity, they continue to read identity as difference, as the contested product of colonial encounters in which the West was always on top. They continue to recreate the history of silenced voices through only one model cultural exchange: one in which European domination are both the motivating force and the inevitable outcome.
2) The inevitable racial bias towards
Syllabus
1. Introduction Different people have different opinions towards the tragedy of Othello. Personally, I am deeply impressed by the racial bias in this tragedy; therefore I try to analyze it from the view of postcolonialism. As you know, the tragedy of Othello has a close relation with Othello’s blackness identity. In the play, the viperous Iago makes full use of Othello’s special Moor identity, which is different from the dominant society, to enrage Desdemona’s father, Brabantio. Then Iago also finds ways to make Othello himself more and more conscious of his blackness identity which result in his self-humiliation. Consequently, love between Othello and Desdemona is gradually damaged due to Othello’s suspicion and blind trust on Iago. Othello is the victim of cross-cultural power plays to some extent. Or, we can say that the tragedy of Othello can be classified as the paradigm of postcolonialism, and the reading of race.
2. Body
1) Brief introduction on postcolonialism As a school, postcolonialism, attempts to look at how texts translate both within and across cultures. It desires to break apart Eurocentric conceptions “hegemonic ‘normality’” and to draw long-lost attention to the voices, societies, and histories that have silenced. That process has opened up cultural voices to a sort of cross-cultural dialogism, recovered traces of the Other in the self, the self in the Other, and emphasized the flexibility and negotiability of cultural borders. Whereas, although postcolonial critiques have begun to read difference into identity, they continue to read identity as difference, as the contested product of colonial encounters in which the West was always on top. They continue to recreate the history of silenced voices through only one model cultural exchange: one in which European domination are both the motivating force and the inevitable outcome.
2) The inevitable racial bias towards
Cited: Brooke, Tucker and Mason, Lawrence, ed. The Tragedy of Othello. USA: Yale University Press, 1947. Edward, Said. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Leonard, F. Dean, ed. A Casebook on Othello. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1961. Elmer, Edgar Stoll. Art and Artifice in Shakespeare. London: Cambridge University Press, 1938. [pic]