Role That Race Plays In Shakespeare's Othello

It is clear that Shakespeare portrays Othellos race as setting him separate in some respects from the predominantly clean-living European society in which he lives. Although Othello is respected for his military valor and nobility of character, he inhabits a culture in which key racial tensions, in particular anxieties about the mixing of races with intermarriage, can be exploited. In Othello, racial stereotypes are both(prenominal) evoked and problematised. The racial divide between Othello and Desdemona is portrayed in deliberately shocking language: Iago tells Brabantio that an old black storm/ is tupping your white ewe (1.1.87-8). In calling Othello Barbary horse and black drive, Iago associates carnality and animality with Othello and total darkness. Yet as much as Iagos rhetoric, and Othellos induce later self-construction, makes Othello carnal, exotic or monstrous, he is also human and sympathetic, vulnerable to Iagos machinations part beca function his diff erence makes him an easy target. Throughout the play, Shakespeare explores a rhetoric of blackness, but always with an ironic distance. When Desdemona believes that the sun has drawn forth Othellos jealous humour (3.4.31), she refers to black bile, one of the quaternion humours that were thought to affect human emotion.

Othello practises black to refer to Desdemonas fraught reputation, drab and black/ as mine own face (3.3.390-1), and also talks of black vengeance(3.3.450). Yet, Shakespeare problematises the use of black as a negative signifier. Desdemonas see is not in fact grungy, because she is innocent, and only believed to be guilty by Othello; neither is Othellos face begri med, since it is naturally dark. The associa! tion of blackness with staining or impurity recalls Iagos attempt to portray Desdemona as being pollute by Othellos love, and yet their love is strong and wholesome until Iago interferes. Black vengeance is associated with Iago himself before Othello seeks vengeance on Desdemona....If you congratulate to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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