Iago critics Flashcards
(20 cards)
Dr Johnson
Iago is “so convicted , that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“motiveless malignity”
argued I is “a being net to the devil”
G.K Hunter - quote
Says I’s racial prejudice means that he wants to make O’s deeds “fit in with the prejudice that his face … excited”
G.K Hunter - what
Iago wants to prove that black men are evil (to prove his prejudice right)
Ania Loomba
“England was increasingly hostile to foreigners, both officially & at a popular level , & London has witneses several major riots against foreign residents”
M.M Mahood
“I’s malice arises from a deep psychological insecirity and fear of inadequacy”
Fintan O’toole
“so close are I+O that they start to melt into each other”
Frances Dolan
“I a representation of ambigous male desire - a man whose sexual jealousy and envy are cloaked in a guise of rationality”
Elaine Showalter
“I’s treatment of women reflects the patriarchal mysoginy that underpins his worldview”
Stephen Greenblatt
“exemplifies the self-fashioning individual”
“constantly shifting his identity in relation to others”
F.R Leavis
“I is a villain of extraordinary complexity , whhose motives are never fully explained”
A.C Bradley
“evil has nowhere else to be portrayed with such mastery as in the character of Iago”
Harold Bloom
“it is O’s tragedy but I’s play”
Samuel Johnson
“the cool malignity of I, silent in his resentment , subtle in his designs”
how many lines does I have vs O
1 = 1097
0 = 860
Thomas Rhymer
too villanous to be believed
E.A.J Honingman (humour)
I’s humour “either intends to give pain or allows him to bask in his own sense of superiority”
also makes him seem “cleverer than his victims”
Harold Bloom
“I is an anti-hero who destabilises the play’s attempt at moral clarity”
E.A.J Honingman
S’s “dramatic perspective compls us to see with his eyes and to share his ‘jokes’ “
Leah Scragg
“personifies … self interest , hypocrisy , cunning”
