Speaking of the Moor : From "Alcazar" to "Othello"

To be sure, in one almost apocryphal response to these kinds of differ- ences, Pory declares it “strange to consider” that on on ...

EnglishHistory, the outlines of the African nations, like the cultures of the in- habitants themselves, change with the times, r ...

but not all, in Venice, and whose presence within Venice revises rather than fulfills the axis of difference through which all ( ...

chapter seven The “stranger of here and everywhere” Othelloand the Moor of Venice In the openingscene of Othello, Iago enlists R ...

“extravagant”—that is, wandering or vagrant—stranger.^1 Yet if his presence betrays the disruptive influx of the “everywhere,” R ...

Cyprus, where an ensign (“l’Alfiero”), “a man of the most depraved nature in the world” (“della più scelerata natura, che mai fo ...

narrator clinches the tale with the surprising revelation that the ensign’s wife narrated “all these events” (“tutto questo succ ...

“tradition” that emerges in the last quarter of the century and extends through Othello—that is, if we consider the insistence, ...

manifest (probably darkened via the “oil of hell”), the script codes Othello un- mistakably as “black.”^18 The term has always b ...

Europe, Othellostarts with a more radical tactic. The play will end, like Titus andLust’s Dominion, with the Moor’s alienation. ...

suggested.^30 However much the earlier play raises to question “which is the merchant here? and which the Jew?”, however much it ...

who serve, without serving their turns upon, their masters ( 1. 1. 19 , 45 ). In order to insure his own good faith (which is, o ...

the Moor’s “joy” to “vexation” meets substantial resistance, realizing his worst fears that the Moor “in a fertile climate dwell ...

At points here the slippery pronouns render the distinction between Braban- tio and Othello—both whose “delight” must be “poison ...

To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor— If this be known to you, and your allowance, We then have done you bold and saucy wron ...

stract, unconditional hate but a certain set of conditions that have preempted his accusers’ ambitions and desires: not simply a ...

duced? If at the outset the inflammatory language of stereotype seems only partially, questionably tenable on Venice’s streets, ...

(such as conquest) to explain the Moor’s presence in Venice. Nor is there a geographic antecedent that surfaces as a contrasting ...

tion,” as Emma Smith has noted.^50 Nor does Othello seem inclined at any point to explain his presence. To the contrary, under p ...

precise and particular obstacles that obstruct Iago’s and Roderigo’s frustrated ambitions, that coincide just before the drama b ...