Here are some ways our essay examples library can help you with your assignment: Read our Academic Honor Code for more information on how to use (and how not to use) our library. A storm has dispersed the Venetian fleet so that Cassio arrives first, anxious for Othello's safety. 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. For more information on choosing credible sources for your paper, check out this blog post. Mythological literary critics look for archetypes, characters and/or symbols with traits that are seen throughout literature regardless of time or place. Home Drama Criticism Analysis of William Shakespeares Othello, By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 ( 0 ). This is not a satisfactory frame of mind for an investigator, and it is certainly not an . http://www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-archetype-criticism-of-othello-a-play-by-william-shakespeare-yJF4zltX Be sure to capitalize proper nouns (e.g. I do perceive here a divided duty: Posted on . And new theories increasingly give credence to the requirement, historically asserted by Jungian readers, that each text elicit a personal, affective, and not merely intellectual response. This scene has suggested to some critics that Iagos true motivation for destroying the marriage of Desdemona and Othello is a repressed homosexual love for Othello. Despite this, Desdemona continued to stay true to Othello. 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. Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, It has been mentioned earlier that pattern in literature refers to recurrent images, forms and words. Archetypal theory then took shape principally in the multidisciplinary journal refounded by Hillman in 1970 in Zurich, Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought. Speak of me as I am. An example, is that they had to overcome a huge obstacle such as love because Othello and Desdemona were in love but her father did not approve of it. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Othello, likewise, has tradud the state and has changed from noble and valiant Othello to a beast, with the passion that ennobled him shown as corrosive and demeaning. A tragic hero has many characteristics, 3 of them being that they must have an error in judgement, they must have a reversal of fortune, and they must recognize that the reversal of fortune was brought about by their own actions. This burgeoning theoretical movement and the generally unsatisfying nature of so much early Jungian literary criticism are both linked to the problematic nature of Jungs own writing on literature, which comprises a handful of essays: The Type Problem in Poetry, On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry, Psychology and Literature, Ulysses: A Monologue, and Is There a Freudian Type of Poetry? These essays reveal Jungs lack of awareness as a reader despite his sense that they may show how ideas that play a considerable role in my work can be applied to literary material (Collected 15:109^. Abstract. Wow! Kibin, 2023, www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-archetype-criticism-of-othello-a-play-by-william-shakespeare-yJF4zltX. For Cassirer, reason alone cannot lead to truth, but mythical thinking which focuses on immediate experience is essential. They were built to defen the city of Nicosia during the Otto-man Venetian war. Desdemona finally, dramatically appears before the senate to support Othellos account of their courtship and to balance her obligation to her father and now to her husband based on the claims of love: My noble father, However, the protagonist of the tragedy play only partially meets the definition of Aristotles tragic hero. To furnish me with some swift means of death The tragic heros downfall, said Aristotle, was brought upon by some error of judgement. Othello is decisive, confident, and secure in his identity, duty, and place in the world. Thus Jungian theory provided no clear avenue of access for those outside of psychology, and orthodox Jungians were left with little in the way of models for the psychological analysis of literature. 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. When Othello cant dismiss his suspicions of his wife being unfaithful any longer he starts to lose his morality . Farewell / Commend me to my kind lord. An equal case can be made that Iago here completes his role as Vice, borrowed from the medieval morality plays, sealing the Faustian bargain for Othellos soul in this mock or black marriage scene. In her final moments, Desdemona chooses not to blame Othello for her death because she saw that the honor of their love was more important than honesty. Where a malignant and a turband Turk Unfortunately, this got the ball rolling for Othello's inevitable downfall. In The Tragedy of Othello, Shakespeare details the story of a celebrated military hero who falls victim to the machinations of a conniving villain who goes by the name of Iago. Often in our society people are labelled as, or fit into a, certain character mould and their behaviour and actions remain consistent. Archetypal criticism gets its impetus from psychologist Carl Jung, who postulated that humankind has a "collective unconscious," a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested in dreams and myths and which harbors themes . Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory. Unlike the other Shakespeare tragedies, which follow the common ideas for Shakespearean tragedy, Othello includes some of the ideas from classical tragedies. http://www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-archetype-criticism-of-othello-a-play-by-william-shakespeare-yJF4zltX, ("An Archetype Criticism of Othello, a Play by William Shakespeare. / Man but a rush against Othello's breast / And he retires." "), "An Archetype Criticism of Othello, a Play by William Shakespeare." Literary Critics on Othello. Here are some examples of archetype in Shakespearean works: Lover: Romeo ("Romeo and Juliet"), Juliet ("Romeo and Juliet"), Antony ("Antony and Cleopatra") Hero: Othello ("Othello"), Hamlet . But Jos van Meurss critically annotated 1988 bibliography, Jungian Literary Criticism, 1920-1980, effectively challenges this claim. This passage reveals how much Othello has deteriorated as far as his ability to reason. . FREE Archetype Essay Essay - Example Essays This recurring idea of an evil witch is extremely common and archetypal. Ignoring her appeals for mercy and avowals of innocence, Othello smothers her moments before Emilia arrives with the proof of Desdemonas innocence and Iagos villainy. QAFQAZ UNIVERSITY SPRING, 2013. . Othello, though, decides to kill her. Archetypes Archetypal criticism focuses on patterns in a literary work that commonly occur in other literary works. Vindicated by the duke of Venice and the senate, Othello, accompanied by Desdemona, takes up his military duties in the face of a threatened Turkish invasion, and the lovers are given a triumphal wedding-like procession and marriage ceremony when they disembark on Cyprus. Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away (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. Othello as a character of noble blood seems to conform to all these. The scene crowns love triumphant. 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. He turns to Iago, who has been brought before him to know the reason for his actions. the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. must concern itself with the archetypal, the universal, with that which is necessarily larger, more extreme than in life. An archetypal critic would also say that the recurring patterns in literature prove that there are universal Archetypal criticism focuses on such things in a work. My life and education both do learn me Aristotles second requirement for a tragedy is that the tragic hero must have a reversal of fortune. The romantic climax comes in the trial scene of act 1, in which Othello success-fully defends himself before the Venetian senate against Brabantios charge that Othello has beguiled his daughter, stoln from me, and corrupted / By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks. Calmly and courteously Othello recounts how, despite the differences of age, race, and background, he won Desdemonas heart by recounting the stories of his exotic life and adventures: She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them. Wonder at Othellos heroic adventures and compassion for her sympathy have brought the two opposites togetherthe young, inexperienced Venetian woman and the brave, experienced outsider. 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. What is a tragic hero and why is Othello considered one? Mythological Criticism and Archetypes BY: TO: AYTEKIN ALIYEVA Prof. SHAHIN KHALILLI. Tis done at your request; but let her live. Frazers and Jungs texts formed the basis of two allied but ultimately different courses of influence on literary history. Thus, all contrastive categorization would benefit from archetypal analysis. Is Othello or Hamlet better? Shakespeare's play, Othello, the Moor of Venice, is a powerful example of a tragedy and its main character, Othello, is an excellent illustration of what Aristotle constitutes as a tragic hero. 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. Van Meurss bibliography conveys the great variety of Jungian writings on literature even within one language, the increasingly recognized potential for further development and use of Jungs ideas, and the growth in numbers of literary scholars falling under the influence of Jung. reflects the archetypal villain" (Sen, ). Finally, Othello arrives giving him the opportunity to renew his marriage vows to Desdemona: It gives me wonder great as my content In addition, Othello is far from being a perfect character - another quality that meets Aristotle's requirements. Thus criticism evolving from his work is more accurately named archetypal and is quite distinct from myth criticism. Thus, with the archetypal theorists multiplying across disciplines on the one hand and the clinically practicing followers serving as (generally inadequate) critics on the other, archetypal literary theory and criticism flourished in two independent streams in the 1960s and 1970s. The critical annotations are astute and, given their brevity, surprisingly thorough and suggestive. As in a typical Shakespearean comedy, love, tested, triumphs over all opposition. ("Literary Criticism.") Nothing extenuate, Othello sends Emilia outside to guard the door. 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. But Wheelwright, for example, barely mentions Jung (The Burning Fountain, 1954), and he, Fergusson, and others often owe more to Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, Oedipus Rex, and the Oedipus complex than to anything taken from Jung. "An Archetype Criticism of Othello, a Play by William Shakespeare." Olympus-high, and duck again as low Ironically, as in the feminist revisioning of explicitly male-biased Jungian theory, the rise in the 1980s of Reader-response theory and criticism and the impetus for canon revision have begun to contribute to a revaluation of Jung as a source of literary study. This allows our team to focus on improving the library and adding new essays. Nor set down aught in malice. "Othello is essentially an noble character, flawed by insecurity and a nature that is naive and unsophisticated". 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. Archetypal criticism, then, construed as that derived from Jungs 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. Aristotles theory is not the final word on tragedy, however it can support in pinpointing the pivotal traits in. The three women are Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca. The traits of the tragic hero lead the audience to feel compassion for the helpless victim. That Cassios not alive. This last text explicitly named the movement and demonstrated its appropriation of archetypal theory for feminist ends in aesthetics, analysis, art, and religion, as well as in literature. The first two acts of the play enact the standard pattern of Shakespeares romantic comedies. Key quotation (Aside) O, you are well tuned now!But I'll set down the pegs that make this music, As honest as I am. Frye's thesis in "The Archetypes of Literature" remains largely unchanged in Anatomy of Criticism. 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. Northrop Frye has been the most influential of those critics who have argued that archetypal patterns underlie the modes, plots and genres of literary works. What bloody business ever. An archetype criticism of othello, a play by william shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Othello, Iago is one of the most compelling villains in English literature. This type of criticism was first experimented by Maud Bodkin, in his book Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934). In this essay let us examine the various themes and determine which are dominant and which subordinate. he asks, which gives pause to a theory of pure nobility. Kibin. ukraine russia border live camera /; June 24, 2022 Check out our Privacy and Content Sharing policies for more information.). Othello is now reduced to questioning his wife's maid, Emilia, looking for evidence of Desdemona's infidelity. On a general level, Jungs and Fryes theorizings about archetypes, however labeled, overlap, and boundaries are elusive, but in the disciplines of literature the two schools have largely ignored each others work. That such a man should fall so far and so fast gives the play an almost unbearable momentum. This heuristic distinction was formed, however, solely on psychobiographical grounds: Did the text originate in, and remain principally shaped by, the authors experience of consciousness and the personal unconscious or his or her experience at the level of the archetypal collective unconscious? May the wind blow till they have wakened death, Of all Shakespeares tragedies . In a mess of questions of good and evil, right and wrong, critical supporters of Iago (T.S. To you, preferring you before her father, Indeed, the psychological resonances of the drama, along with its provocative racial and gender themes, have caused Othello, perhaps more than any other of Shakespeares plays, to reverberate the loudest with current audiences and commentators. Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous, Did you find something inaccurate, misleading, abusive, or otherwise problematic in this essay example? For Jung, archetype is an explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic eidos (9, pt. 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. Now art thou my lieutenant. 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. 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. These patterns and themes, often referred to as archetypes, are believed to be present in the collective unconscious of all human beings . Othello is generally regarded as Shakespeares greatest stage play, the closest he would ever come to conforming to the constrained rules of Aristotelian tragedy. However, the Moor and Alfiero join forces to kill Disdemona, beating her to death with a stocking filled with sand before pulling down the ceiling on her dead body to conceal the crime as an accident. Macbeth) in the essay title portion of your citation. In this play there are only three women in the entire play. However, these fields of study contributed a lot to the development of archetypal criticism through the characters of Sir James Frazer and Carl Jung. Commend me to my kind lord. He carries out his own execution for a violation that threatens social and psychic order. (2.1.191-93) Setting the scene. Egypt) and titles (e.g. The example essays in Kibin's library were written by real students for real classes. O, farewell! Desdemona on her deathbed, still defends her Lords actions. Some of these include the downfall from high position Othello goes from being the general, to being convicted of being a murderer. Essays may be lightly modified for readability or to protect the anonymity of contributors, but we do not edit essay examples prior to publication. The Shakespearean tragedy Othello contains a number of themes; their relative importance and priority is debated by literary critics. 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. In archetypal criticism, under the reductive method of analysis, a critic, while elucidating a text, moves from the particular truth to the general truth. 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. Feminist Critique of the Character Desdemona in Othello Introduction Women during Elizabethan age are assumed to have spent their lives in the service of men - prearranged marriages, child rearing, and their role as sexual objects. The key to extremely detrimental jealousy lies within one's ability to recognize it or deny it. His destruction is essentially precipitated by his own actions, as well as by the actions of the characters surrounding him. By speaking of soul as a primary metaphor, rather than defining soul substantively and attempting to derive its ontological status from empirical demonstration or theological (metaphysical) argument, archetypal psychology recognizes that psychic reality is inextricably involved with rhetoric (Hillman, Archetypal 19). Many fell prey to Jungs idiosyncrasies as a reader, ranging widely and naively over genres, periods, and languages in search of the universal archetypes, while sweeping aside cultureand text-specific problems, ignoring their own role in the act of reading and basing critical evaluation solely on a texts contribution to the advancement of the readers individuation process, a kind of literature-astherapy standard. The story opens on Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old growing up in the upper-middle class in England in 1953 with . William Shakespeare utilized archetype frequently as a literary device in his plays. Other forms previously labeled Jungian are here subsumed under the term archetypal because whatever their immediate specific focus, these forms operate on a set of assumptions derived from Jung and accept the depth-psychological structure posited by Jung. Archetypal criticism is a literary approach that analyzes works of literature based on the idea that there are universal, timeless patterns and themes that recur across all cultures and throughout history. In addition, many powerfully heuristic Jungian concepts, such as synchronicity, have yet to be tested in literary contexts. Child and Youth Care and Disability CYC 3000 Assignment: Getting to Know Disability Justice A deep dive into activists introduced by L. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Due Week 2, Friday at 11:59p It is important that you begin to learn about the various people and organizations that are leading the conversation on disability justice. If we carefully examine the third scene in the third act, we can see how Othello fits into Aristotle's definition of tragic hero. 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 . 1. For the fair devil. norwegian cruise line dining menus archetypal criticism in othello. An archetype is the original pattern or . Othello is a man of high rank in Venice. Analysis. Of one that loved not wisely but too well, (3.3.54) Ex. Archetypal Literary Criticism. 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 men of the play manipulate her image of a naive lover to being a strumpet! (V.ii.94). The term 'archetype' is taken from the Greek words 'arche' (beginning) and 'typos' (imprint). Archetypal Criticism Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. We'll take a look right away. Othello is a Moorish (African) general in the Venetian army and an eloquent storyteller who is respected, but often treated as an outsider. 2. As the story unfolds Othellos character evolves in an extremely tragic way as Iago manipulates him and leaves him to rot in his misery. I pray you, in your letters, Frye, then, first misinterprets Jungian theory by insisting on a Lamarckian view of genetic transmission of archetypes, which Jung explicitly rejected, and later settles on a concept of archetype as a literary occurrence per se, an exclusively intertextual recurring phenomenon resembling a convention (99). No more of that. As Hillman puts it, Corbins insight that Jungs mundus archetypalis is also the mundus imaginalis that corresponds to the Islamic alam al-mithl (3) was an early move toward a reappraisal of psychology itself as an activity of poesis (24). So much I challenge that I may profess But the great literary text for Jungs life and work was Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Faust, not because of its literary qualities but because he sensed that the drama expressed his own personal myth (Letters 1:309-10). After Othello returns from war at sea with the Turks, his fortune begins a downward spiral. Othello is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. Eventually, this leads to Othellos suicide. BASIC PREMISES OF ARCHETYPAL THEORY: 1. Placing responsibility in the stars - he calls Desdemona an "ill-starred wench" - is hardly a gallant course of action. At mid-century, Canadian critic Northrop Frye (1912-91) introduced new distinctions in literary criticism between myth and archetype. Each literary theory will examine the text through different lenses, resulting in different interpretations.