MLA Research Paper

Formalist Answers

Othello (1604) is widely regarded as one of Shakespeare's great tragedies. The play recounts the tragic fate of Othello, a Moorish general and recent convert to Christianity, who is charged by his Venetian superiors with the defense of Cyprus from Turkish aggression. Against this historical backdrop, Othello focuses on the deceitful machinations of the villain, Iago, an amoral subordinate to Othello who sees to it that the Moor's brief marriage to Desdemona, the daughter of an influential Venetian senator, ends in her murder and Othello's suicide (Adamson, 1980).

Othello, after blindly succumbing to the diabolical scheming of his trusted lieutenant, descends into enraged jealousy, falsely believing that another lieutenant, Cassio, has had a sexual affair with his innocent wife. Othello later strangles Desdemona before killing himself as Iago's nefarious conniving comes to light. Many recent scholars have argued that Othello dramatizes a multitude of early modern cultural concerns, including conventional social attitudes about racism and misogyny, xenophobic and religious anxiety about Turkish expansion into Europe, and insecurity about the political viability of newly forming pre-modern nation states. Those critics who have examined the dramatic structure of Othello evaluate the thematic importance of the handkerchief, discuss how the complex narrative shapes each character's perspective of themselves and others, and demonstrate how Shakespeare's use of certain comic conventions obscures the drama's tragic vision (Cartmell, 2000).

Psychological Answers

Racial and gender issues figure prominently in contemporary critical studies of Othello. Sara Deats argues that both Othello and Desdemona represent unconventional social types--the self-made, upwardly mobile foreigner and the liberated woman--whose nonconformity is ultimately overwhelmed by established xenophobic and misogynistic attitudes. Deats underscores Iago's role as the agent of this ideological containment and demonstrates how Shakespeare exposed the lieutenant's strategies to achieve "the refashioning and programming of Othello and Desdemona, thereby defending himself against the threat of the racial and sexual Other." In a similar analysis, Alexander Leggatt maintains that Othello and Desdemona's marriage is perceived by the other characters to be a violation of proscribed cultural conventions. The newlyweds' own cognizance of this violation destabilizes their individual identities, Leggatt continues, and creates an opportunity for Iago--who has no identity of his own--to exploit the conflict. Christopher Baker studies references to the Pontic (i.e., Black) Sea and barbaric Scythian tribes in Othello, demonstrating how these images serve to accentuate the Moor's exoticism in both geographic and ethnic terms. Emily C. Bartels also considers Othello's status ...