Othello critics

Question 1

Ania Loomba - end

Answer 1

“near schitzofrenic hero”
final speech “graphically portrays the split”

Question 2

Ania Loomba - uh oh

Answer 2

“aware of his tenous position”
tragedy casued when he “begins to forget that he is black”

Question 3

Karen Newman - way race is presented

Answer 3

does not feel O’s race os presented in a derogatory way , but as a means to challenge negative assumptions of society

Question 4

Caryl Philips - stressed

Answer 4

stressed O’s isolation as a black man in a white world

Question 5

Frances Dolan

Answer 5

Jacobean audience and race
- feels O’s race would have been problematic to S’s audience
- would have felt suspicious because he is black

Question 6

Paul Roberson - :(

Answer 6

O a “tragedy of racial conflict”

Question 7

G Wilson-Knight

Answer 7

Suggests P’s speech displays a “uniquely soldierly precision” & a “serenity of thought”

Question 8

Paul Roberson - o e e a e e o e

Answer 8

it is because “he is an alien among white poeple that his mind worls so quickly for he feels dishonour more deeply”

Question 9

Lisa Jardin

Answer 9

O murders D “for adultery, not out of jealousy” and he acts with a “complete certainty of her guilt”

Question 10

Caryl Philips - constantly

Answer 10

O feels “constantly threatened and profoundly insecure”

Question 11

Caryl Phillips - life is like a

Answer 11

Sees O’s tragedy as a result of his insecurity and isolation in V society
“life for him is a game in which he does not know the rules”

Question 12

G.K Hunter

Answer 12

O becomes “a tragedy of the loss of faith”

Question 13

Ania Loomba - turks

Answer 13

“because O is needed to combat the turks , the senate is willing to regard him as far more fair than black , for B such blindness is impossible”

Question 15

Ania Loomba - fantasy

Answer 15

“O is both a fantasy of interracial love and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence”

Question 16

Caryl philips - O’s line…

Answer 16

‘she had eyes and chose me’ reveals O’s “gross insecurity

Question 17

Caryl Philips - O’s fatal mistake

Answer 17

is “to Q his own judgement”

Question 18

E.A.J Honingman

Answer 18

Claims that O is “the most exciting of Shakespeare’s tragedies”

Question 19

Dominic West

Answer 19

actor , played O in 2011, described “Othello” and “a sexual competition between Iago and Othello”

Question 20

Karen Newman - exposes

Answer 20

O exposes the “fear of racial and sexual difference” of Reinessance culture

Question 21

Caryl Phillips - youre the man steve

Answer 21

commented O is “a man of action , not a thinker”
and suggests O’s position is tenuous

Question 22

F.R. Leavis

Answer 22

The mind that undoes him is not Iago’s but his own.

Question 23

Ania Loomba

Answer 23

Othello’s identity can only be read against a collective category called ‘Moors.