Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Reading

• Othello, Acts 1–3 (continued)
• Baldassare Castiglione, “From The Book of the Courtier” (BC, 73–76)

Notes

Today we’ll look primarily at how Iago uses language to gain advantage. Most noticeably, he successfully manipulates Othello, but his trickery works on others, too. As we can see even in the first three acts of Othello, Iago’s actions are destructive in many ways; note well Robert Dallington, a seventeenth-century military theorist: “Nothing is more dangerous in the services of warre or peace, then discord and faction among the great ones.”

We’ll also begin thinking about how race and gender function in the play. How does the play manipulate stereotypes? Do the characters succumb to or defy expectations?