Othello or Othe(r)llo: A vacillation Between the Familiar and the Alien.

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Othello or Othe(r)llo: A vacillation Between the Familiar and the Alien This essay challenges the popular view of Othello as a villain, and examines this in the context of Said's theory of Orientalism. The literary tradition of portraying "black-faced" men as wicked has encompassed a time span from the Middle Ages, through and beyond the sixteenth century (Hunter 1967: 142). Hence, there is good reason to assume that a Shakespearean audience's attitude towards a "Negro" character concurs with this dominant literary representation. This character's "wickedness" is viewed as a self-fulfilling prophecy, pre-constructed by an audience that knew nothing more. To a contemporary audience however, the black character is much more ambiguous and multifaceted; this is largely a result of the more informed racial precepts nested in a modern readership. Consequently, the assistance of Said's theory of "Orientalism" allows the modern reader to look beyond this hegemonic sixteenth century representation of the Negro, to see a dynamic interchange of binary opposites.Within Shakespeare's Othello one can see a constant vacillation between the familiar and the alien. There is a continuous conflict between Othello's characterization as a foreign "Other," and his association with the "familiar" European. This play should not be examined merely in terms of a "tyrannical Moor" who has degenerated into his pre-Europeanized state. It is the purpose of this paper to explore Othello as a product of European colonization and domestication. If Othello's character is examined from this perspective, then it also calls into question his characterisation as a "tragic figure," acting upon the impulses "prone to the nature of his race." At times it is through this perception of his otherness that he is paradoxically linked to the familiar, and his domestication into the familiar, which reestablishes his otherness. These ambiguities in Othello will become evident through various examples of language, plot, and characterization. The first issue to be considered in Othello, is Shakespeare's possible reason for presenting a Moor in the play. One of the most feasible explanations to this question has an historical significance. It is stated within Emily Bartel's article "Renaissance Refashioning of Race" that Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, a popular text of the Shakespearean era, is filled (by current standards) with indiscriminate labelling of Africa's inhabitants.1 Terms such as "Africans," "Negroes," and "Ethiopes" are all used interchangeably, however, it
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is generally accepted that Hakluyt's "Moors" appear more civilized than other inhabitants observed on the continent. (Bartels 1990: 437-38). The concept "more civilized" is likely to mean that Hakluyt observed the Moors to be complementary to European civilization in some way. Hakluyt has indirectly constructed the image of the Moor through his own Euro centric perceptions of the civilized. Hakluyt has created a hybrid, bringing this "Other" closer to the familiar in Europe by labelling it civilized, yet it is still distanced by the fact that the Moor is not native to Europe. Thus, through popular literature, Hakluyt has preeminently ...

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