It Ends Wretchedly. Othello and Nonlinear Female Tragedy
Abstract
The articles focuses first on the Elizabethan theory of tragedy, being based on the Medieval traditioon of the Fall of Princes and then implemented with the discovery of Artistole’s Poetics. Then it shows how Othello, and more generally Shakespearian tragedy, veers away from this canonical format and instead pursues a model of plotmaking based on the imagery of weaving, as is made clear by the numerous references in the play to knitting and weaving and to women’s domestic work, resulting in a purposedly indistinct, complex result if compared to the canonical fall of the tragical hero.
Downloads
References
Bacon, Francis, The Advancement of Learning (1605), New York, E.P. Dutton, 1915.
Ballestra-Puech, Sylvie, Métamorphoses d’Arachné. L’artiste en araignèe dans la littérature occidentale, Genève, Droz, 2006.
Barley, William, A Booke of Curious and Strange Inuentions, Called the First Part of Needleworkes, London, 1596.
Barolini, Teodolinda, “Arachne, Argus, and St. John: Transgressive Art in Dante and Ovid”, Medievalia 13 (1987): 207-26.
Bates, Catherine, “Weaving and Writing in Othello”, Shakespeare Survey,46(1994): 51-60.
Belfiore,Elizabeth S., Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992.
Berger, Harry jr., “Impertinent Trifling: Desdemona’s Handkerchief”, New Casebooks. Othello. William Shakespeare, Ed. Lena Cowen Orlin, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004: 103-24.
Boose, Lynda, “Othello’s Handkerchief: ‘The Recognizance and Pledge of Love’”, Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, Ed. Anthony Gerard Barthelemy, New York, G.K. Hall & Co, 1994: 55-67.
Bullough, Geoffrey, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, VII.
Callaghan, Dympna, “Looking well to linens: Women and cultural production in Othello”, Marxist Shakespeares, Ed. T. Hawkes, London, Routledge, 2001: 53-81.
Castelvetro, Lodovico, Poetica d'Aristotele Vulgarizzata e Sposta, Ed. Werther Romani, Bari, Laterza, 1978.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, “The Monk’s Tale”, The Riverside Chaucer(1977), Ed. George Robinson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Chevrolet, Teresa, L'idée de fable: théories de la fiction poétique à la Renaissance, Genève, Librairie Droz, 2007.
Chiari, Sophie, L’image du labyrinthe à la Renaissance. Détours et arabesques au temps de Shakespeare, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2010.
Coronato, Rocco, “La tragedia in Inghilterra”, Le rinascite della tragedia. Origni classiche e tradizione europee, Ed. Gianni Guastella, Roma, Carocci, 2006: 207-42.
Dundas, Judith, “Arachne’s Web: Emblem into Art”, Emblematica, 2 (1989): 109-37.
Frye, Susan, Pens and needles: Women’s textualities in Early Modern England, Philadelphia-Oxford, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Gellrich, Michelle, Tragedy and theory: the problem of conflict since Aristotle, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988.
Giraldi, Giambattista Cinzio, “Discorso intorno al comporre delle comedie e delle tragedie”, Scritti critici, Ed. Camillo Guerrieri Crocetti, Milano, Marzorati, 1973.
Florio, John, A Worlde of Wordes, or Most Copious, and Exact Dictionarie in Italian and English, London, 1598.
Gillespie, Stuart, Shakespeare’s Books. A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources, London-New Brunswick, Athlone, 2001.
Golding, Arthur, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1567), London, Penguin, 2002.
Hagen, Tanya, “An English Renaissance Understanding of the Word “Tragedy”. Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 1 (1997): 5.1-30.
Heinsius, Daniel, De constitutione tragoediae. La constitution de la tragédie, dite La Poétique d’Heinsius, Ed. Anne Duprat, Genève, Droz, 2001.
Herry, Herbert, “Italian Definitions of Tragedy and Comedy Arrive in England”, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900,14:2(1974): 179-87.
Jonson, Ben, Discoveries, Ed. Lorna Hutson, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, VII.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar, Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Korda, Natasha, Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies: Gender and Property in Early Modern England, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Montaigne, Michel de, “De l’art de conferer”, Essais, livre III, Ed. Maurice Rat, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 1962, XII.
Pincombe, Mike, “English Renaissance tragedy: theories and antecedents”, The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy, Eds. Emma Smith and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010: 3-16.
Reiss, Timothy J., “Renaissance theatre and the theory of tragedy”, The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Ed. Glyn P. Norton, The Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006: 229-47, III.
Sandys, George, Ovid’s Metamorphosis (1632), Eds. Karl K. Hulley – Stanley T. Vandersall, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
Shakespeare, William, Othello (1997), Ed. E.A.J. Honigmann, The Arden Shakespeare, London, Thomson Learning, 2003.
Shohet, Lauren, “Othello’s iPad”, Shakespearean Echoes, Ed. K. Wetmore, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015: 108-119.
Smith, Ian, “Othello’s Black Handkerchief”, Othello: the State of Play, Ed. L.C. Orlin, The Arden Shakespeare, London, Bloomsbury, 2014: 95-120.
Steiner, George, The Death of Tragedy (1961), trad. it. Morte della tragedia, Milano, Garzanti, 1965.
Warner, Lawrence, “Desdemona’s Wooing: Towards a Pre-1538 Othello”, Words and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660, Eds. Philippa Kelly and L.E. Semler, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2010: 121-34.
Wright, Craig, The Maze and the Warrior. Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music, Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
