archetypal criticism in othello
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. As Iago asserts to Roderigo, Virtue? An archetype is recurrent. archetypal criticism in othello. Archetypal Criticism Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. The movie Zootopia uses animals to portray racism and sexism; predators do not like prey and vice versa. "Othello is like a hero of the ancient world in that he is not a man like us, but a man recognized as extraordinary". The Shakespearean tragedy Othello contains a number of themes; their relative importance and priority is debated by literary critics. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler, 20 vois., 1953-79), Letters (trans. 3. For Jung, archetype is an explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic eidos (9, pt. - Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University, We use cookies to provide the best possible experience on our site. The tragedy of Othello, written by William Shakespeare, presents the main character Othello, as a respectable, honorable, and dignified man, but because of his insecurities and good nature, he is easily taken advantage of and manipulated by his peers and alleged friends. Iagos motivation is anything but explainable in conventional terms. Sign up A fig! Self-interest is all that matters, and love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Othello and Desdemona cannot possibly remain devoted to each other, and, as Iago concludes, If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an err-ing barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits, and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her. The problem of Iagos motivation to destroy Othello and Desdemona is not that he has too few motives but too many. An archetypal critic would also say that the recurring patterns in literature prove that there are universal He suffers barbs and preconceived notions, yet Othello is esteemed and wins the love of the daughter of a nobleman. The formerly self-sufficient Othello has now staked his life to his faith in Desdemona and their union, and she has done the same. Where a malignant and a turband Turk The present essay, "Archetypes of Literature," is taken from the book. Othellos motivation in the play appears to be his love and concern for his wife Desdemona, which ironically, ends up being his downfall in the end. In the essay Frye critically analyses literature against the backdrop of rituals and myths. For Cassirer, reason alone cannot lead to truth, but mythical thinking which focuses on immediate experience is essential. To you, preferring you before her father, Altho a tragic ending it may be, Othello couldn't stand being a such a fool to have believed such lies about his one and only love. Shakespeare often focuses his plays on human nature as well as fate, which Othellos fate ended in the tragic ending due to his reversal of fortune once the claims against Desdemona begin. However, in William Shakespeare's Othello, Emilia's character portrays three completely different archetypes and they all come through in strategical places. But Jung's theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious differs . However, these fields of study contributed a lot to the development of archetypal criticism through the characters of Sir James Frazer and Carl Jung. In this play there are only three women in the entire play. In addition, he modified and extended his concept over the many decades of his professional life, often insisting that archetype named a process, a perspective, and not a content, although this flexibility was lost through the codifying, nominalizing tendencies of his followers. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the readers heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation. Othello: Damn her, lewd minx! The tragic protagonist must make a fall from a high state of being to a low state or death. His final speech mixes together the acknowledgment of what he was and what he has become, who he is and how he would like to be remembered: I have done the state some service, and they knowt. Othello's Integrity One of Othello's admirable qualities is that he believes that men should be transparent and honest as he is; "Certain, men should be what they seem" (Act 3 Scene 3 Line 134). The next significant development in archetypal theory that affected literary studies grew out of the effort made by U.S.-born, Zurich-trained analyst James Hillman (b. The critical annotations are astute and, given their brevity, surprisingly thorough and suggestive. These archetypalists, focusing on the imaginaland making central the concept that in English they call soul, assert their kinship with Semiotics and Structuralism but maintain an insistent focus on psychoid phenomena, which they characterize as meaningful. Marxist criticism would also have offered a distinctive way of looking at Othello. Essays may be lightly modified for readability or to protect the anonymity of contributors, but we do not edit essay examples prior to publication. As hells from heaven. 2. Othello assumes that Emilia is helping Desdemona in her infidelity. My soul hath content so absolute His destruction is essentially precipitated by his own actions, as well as by the actions of the characters surrounding him. Aristotles theory is not the final word on tragedy, however it can support in pinpointing the pivotal traits in. Following his anatomizing of the painfully introspective intellectual Hamlet, Shakespeare, at the height of his ability to probe human nature and to dramatize it in action and language, treats Hamlets temperamental oppositethe man of action. Shakespeare shifts the action from Venice to Cyprus. BASIC PREMISES OF ARCHETYPAL THEORY: 1. Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. Van Meurs also does a service by resurrecting successful but neglected early studies, such as Elizabeth Drews of T. S. Eliot (1949), and discovering value even in reductionist and impressionistic studies, such as June Singers of Blake. Despite this, Desdemona continued to stay true to Othello. In spite of his elevated status, he is nevertheless easy prey to insecurities because of his age, his life as a soldier, and his race. William Shakespeare, born in the year 1564, is often considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, writer in the English language. Despite naively playing into Iago's hands earlier by giving him the handkerchief, Emilia shows her earnest loyalty to Desdemona. O my souls joy, By the end of the play, he has brought down his world around him with the relentless force that made him a great general turned inward, destroying both what he loved best in another and in himself. But heres my husband; A tragic hero is a hero nonetheless, but it all comes down to how they hold themselves together in the face of. Othello Zootopia Act 1 The wall Othello is referring to are the Walls of Nicosia which surround the capital city Nicosia in Cyprus. Iago replies: Demand me nothing; what you know, you know: / From this time forth I never will speak word. By Iagos exiting the stage, closing access to his motives, the focus remains firmly on Othello, not as Iagos victim, but as his own. He has promoted Cassio to lieutenant while leaving Iago as ensign. In his major work, The Anatomy of Criticism, he states: 'I mean by an archetype a symbol which connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and integrate our . The tragic heros downfall, said Aristotle, was brought upon by some error of judgement. Role of the Archetypal Symbols The handercheif is utilized throught Othello to demonstrate the loyalty of Desdemona, as well as Othello's love for her. Jung was also more preoccupied with dreams and fantasies, because he saw them as exclusively (purely) products of the unconscious, in contrast to literature, which he oddly believed, citing Joyces Ulysses as an example, was created in the full light of consciousness (15:123). Thus, all contrastive categorization would benefit from archetypal analysis. This is not a satisfactory frame of mind for an investigator, and it is certainly not an . However, Othello's words give a deeper insight into how he still misunderstands the situation. He turns to Iago, who has been brought before him to know the reason for his actions. To wronged Othellos service. Mythological literary critics look for archetypes, characters and/or symbols with traits that are seen throughout literature regardless of time or place. Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, Consistent with his role as guardian of order in the state, Othello carries out his own execution, by analogy judging his act as a violation reflected by Venices savage enemy: And say besides, that in Aleppo once, This explains his fascination with a text like Rider Haggards novel She: The History of an Adventure (1886-87), with its unmediated representation of the anima. As Jung himself noted: Literary products of highly dubious merit are often of the greatest interest to the psychologist (Collected 15:87-88). You know how looking at a math problem similar to the one you're stuck on can help you get unstuck? Dramatically, Shakespeare turns the focus of the play from the shocking crime to its causes and psychic significance, trans-forming Cinthios intrigue story of vile murder into one of the greatest dramatic meditations on the nature of love and its destruction. In Shakespeare?s play Othello, Othello himself is the tragic hero. He notes that Singers Unholy Bible: A Psychological Interpretation of William Blake (1970), though oversimplified in its psychobiographical approach and its treatment of characters as psychological projections of the author, does make original use in a literary context of such Jungian techniques of dream interpretation as amplification and of such fantasy-evoking procedures as active imagination.. Desdemonas true morals is her absolute devotion to her husband. Historical is basically know the background story before you making assumptions off the text, and to better understand text lookup time period close to the time like 1600's . Nobody; I myself. : Feminist: Ex. Two publishing events at the beginning of the 1990s in the United States may signal the coming of age of this kind of archetypal criticism through its convergence with postmodern critical thought, along with a commensurate insistence on its roots in the depth psychology of Jung: the reissue of Morris Philipsons 1963 Outline of a Jungian Aesthetic and the appearance of Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino DAcerinos multidisciplinary, multicultural collection of essays, C. G. Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture. Archetypal critics are also interested in certain myths and rituals that recur in a wide variety of cultures. To learn more, read our. Shakespeare derived his plot from Giraldi Cinthios Tale of the Moor, in the story collection Hecatommithi (1565), reshaping Cinthios sensational tale of jealousy, intrigue, and murder in several key ways. He is a character of high stature that is destroyed by his surroundings, his own actions, and his fate. Unlike the other Shakespeare tragedies, which follow the common ideas for Shakespearean tragedy, Othello includes some of the ideas from classical tragedies. According to Aristotle, a tragic protagonist is a nobleman or person from high status, who contributes to his own demise and illustrates a flaw or weakness in judgment. Kibin, 2023. http://www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-archetype-criticism-of-othello-a-play-by-william-shakespeare-yJF4zltX. Archetypal Criticism Volume I. Act 3, one of the wonders of the stage, anatomizes Othellos psychic descent from perfect contentment in his new wife to complete loathing, from a worldview in which everything is as it appears to one in which nothing is as it seems. Indeed, myth criticism seems singularly unaffected by any of the archetypal theorists who have remained faithful to the origins and traditions of depth, especially analytical, psychologyJames Hillman, Henri Corbin, Gilbert Durand, Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Evangelos Christou. However, for Othello this is not the case. OTHELLO: Iago critics. In a mess of questions of good and evil, right and wrong, critical supporters of Iago (T.S. Archetypal criticism, then, construed as that derived from Jung's theory and practice of archetypal (analytical) psychology, is a fledgling and much misconstrued field of inquiry with significant but still unrealized potential for the study of literature and of aesthetics in general. Iago will direct the remainder of the play, constructing Othellos down-fall out of the flimsiest evidence and playing on the strengths and weaknesses of Othellos nature and the doubts that erode Othellos faith in Desdemona. O, farewell! (5. It is in Act 3 Scene 3 where Othello takes on a new persona, where his confidence and happiness is tragically replaced with jealousy and rage. edmonton oilers jokes archetypal criticism in othello archetypal criticism in othello. And smote himthus. Some of these include the downfall from high position Othello goes from being the general, to being convicted of being a murderer. Iago: My friend is dead. When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, The play imitates life through basic human emotions such as jealousy and rage. It has been mentioned earlier that pattern in literature refers to recurrent images, forms and words. Othello makes an error in judgement, which leads to his change in fortune, and later realizes that his actions are what caused said change in fortune. (V.2.316, 323) It is beyond a doubt Othello's fault that all of this wreckage befalls him, and his still has not had a moment of recognition of his failures at reasoning and understanding. Aristotle believed that the plot is the most important element in a play and that plot also clearly points out the problem of any characters to be solved. A few names form a core of writers in English (including many Canadians)Martin Bickman, Albert Gelpi, Elliott Gose, Evelyn Hinz, Henry Murray, Barton L. St. Armand, Harold Schechter, and William Stein though no single figure has attracted the attention of academic literary specialists, and no persistent commonalities fuse into a recognizable school critics who draw on Jungs theories. Ralph Manheim, 1974); Morris Philipson, Outline of a Jungian Aesthetic (1963, reprint, 1991); Annis Pratt et al., Archetypal Patterns in Womens Fiction (1981); Jos van Meurs and John Kidd, Jungian Literary Criticism, 1920-1980: An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Works in English (with a Selection of Titles after 1980) (1988); William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957). Having triumphantly bested the social and natural forces aligned against them, having staked all to the devotion of the other, Desdemona and Othello will not be left to live happily ever after, and the tragedy will grow out of the conditions that made the comedy. Carl Jungs Contribution to Psychoanalytic Theory. QAFQAZ UNIVERSITY SPRING, 2013. This allows our team to focus on improving the library and adding new essays.