Othello and Interpretive Traditions

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University of Iowa Press, 1999 M08 1 - 272 pages
During the past twenty years or so, Othello has become the Shakespearean tragedy that speaks most powerfully to our contemporary concerns. Focusing on race and gender (and on class, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality), the play talks about what audiences want to talk about. Yet at the same time, as refracted through Iago, it forces us to hear what we do not want to hear; like the characters in the play, we become trapped in our own prejudicial malice and guilt.
 

Contents

Othello in Theatrical and Critical History
11
Disconfinuation
30
lago
53
The Fall of Othello
79
The Pity Act
113
Death without Transfiguration
141
Interpretation as Contamination
169
Character Endures
183
Notes
193
Works Cited
231
Index
247
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

Edward Pechter has taught at universities in the U. S., England, and Canada and is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Concordia University (Montreal) and Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). His books include Dryden’s Classical Theory of Literature, What Was Shakespeare?, Textual and Theatrical Shakespeare (Iowa, 1996), Othello: A Norton Critical Edition, and Shakespeare Studies Today: Romanticism Lost.

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