🗡️OTHELLO: AO5: ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS (THOUGHT)

Question 1

IAGO QUOTE (EVIL,DECEPTION, MANIPULATION)

Answer 1

Coleridge called Iago’s actions “the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity.”

Question 2

OTHELLO QUOTE (OUSTIDER, STATUS, TRAGEDY)

Answer 2

F.R. Leavis said Othello has a “habit of self-approving self-dramatisation.”

Question 3

DESDEMONA QUOTE (GENDER, PASSIVITY, VICTIMHOOD)

Answer 3

Marilyn French argued that Desdemona is “destroyed by the cunning and misogyny of a culture she cannot understand.”

Question 4

PLAY’S TRAGEDY/TENSION

Answer 4

A.C. Bradley said Othello is “the most painfully exciting and the most terrible” of Shakespeare’s tragedies because of its “concentration of feeling.”

Question 5

OTHELLO QUOTE 2 (race as tragic hero)

Answer 5

Ania Loomba described Othello as both a “racist stereotype” and “a hero who falls because he can never be truly part of the white world.”

Question 6

IAGO QUOTE 2 (Iago’s manipulation, appearance vs reality)

Answer 6

E.A.J. Honigmann said that Iago’s “success is due to a combination of luck and the skill with which he exploits Othello’s vulnerabilities.”