ENG102 Othello by Shakespeare Structural Binaries of Race Essay Hello, I have a paper due for my english class and its on Othello by Shakespeare. I have pr

ENG102 Othello by Shakespeare Structural Binaries of Race Essay Hello, I have a paper due for my english class and its on Othello by Shakespeare. I have provided a word file with the assignment and everything that corresponds with it. There should be a free pdf of the whole play online. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 8 pages long, 5 to 6 pages should be good enough. English 102
Fall 2019
First Essay Assignment
This first graded essay assignment, due Thursday, October 10, at the beginning of class, is to be typed,
double-spaced, around 6-8 pages. Any paper turned in past the due date will be marked down for every
day late. As stated before, it will be reviewed under three criteria: organization, content and grammar.
Please make sure to quote and cite appropriately to show support of your argument. [Use the
handouts I gave you.] Please don’t hesitate to consult with me or your Supplemental instruction mentor
during office hours or by appointment.
The assignment requires a structural analysis of William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Othello, first in terms
of race and then of gender, with certain restrictions to be explained shortly.
Introduction: Summarize how the play is a tragedy, as defined in Aristotle’s Poetics, noting the moment
of peripeteia and anagnorisis. Summarize enough in the introduction to set up the scene, but keep it
brief. [No more than 1½-2 pages.]
Thesis: Transition from the introduction to the thesis by answering the following prompt question:
As a tragedy, how does Othello display the structural binaries of race (colonialism) and gender
in the characters of Brabantio/Othello and Iago/Emilia, respectively?
Thus, an outline to the body parts of your essay will first consider race relations (or colonialism) in terms
of Brabantio and Othello, and then consider gender in terms of Iago and Emilia. You will have to explain
the characters and their relations to one another, and find passages in the play from each to illustrate
these binaries. Again, quote and cite appropriately. So,…
…in the first part of your essay, focus on how race or “other” backgrounds impact the community’s
treatment of Othello and his “outsider” status. You may consider how Brabantio view Othello as inferior,
despite his military heroism. [Remember that structural binaries always considers one side as “better”
than the other; hence, the Eurocentric prejudice (in this case, Italian or Venetian) over non-European
ethnic groups (African, Arabs, Turks, etc.).] You may consider other characters, too (the Duke, for
instance), but the focus needs to be on Brabantio and Othello.
In the second part of your essay, argue the impact of gender bias within the relationship between Iago
and Emilia. Consider how the two genders here (male and female) view one another and themselves.
How are these stereotypes supported and/or challenged in the play? Again, you may consider other
characters (like Cassio or Desdemona), but the focus needs to be on Iago and Emilia.
Conclusion: Compare these perspectives on race and gender to current perspectives of racism,
xenophobia and sexism, to analyze the cultural relevance of the play. When commenting on current
sentiments, give specific examples for support and not vague generalizations.
Poetics, by Aristotle (350 B.C.E.). Trans. S. H. Butcher
Tragedy, then, is an imitation (mimesis) of an action that is serious, complete, and of a
certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the
several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of
narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation (catharsis) of these
emotions.
… Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who
necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by
these that we qualify actions themselves, and these— thought and character— are the two
natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure
depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action— for by plot I here mean the
arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe
certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it
may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which
parts determine its quality— namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.
Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the
objects of imitation. And three is nothing else besides these six. These elements have
been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play contains
Spectacular elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction, Song, and Thought.
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not
of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of
action, not a quality. Now character determines men’s qualities, but it is by their actions
that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the
representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the
incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again,
without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character. The tragedies of
most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is
often true. If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well
finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect
nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot
and artistically constructed incidents. Besides which, the most powerful elements of
emotional interest in Tragedy— Peripety or Reversal of the Situation, and Recognition
scenes— are parts of the plot. A further proof is, that novices in the art attain to finish of
diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with
almost all the early poets.
The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds
the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on
confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus
Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action.
Third in order is Thought— that is, the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in
given circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the political art and of
the art of rhetoric: and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language
of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians. Character is that
which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.
Speeches, therefore, which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not
choose or avoid anything whatever, are not expressive of character. Thought, on the other
hand, is found where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is
enunciated.
Fourth among the elements enumerated comes Diction; by which I mean, as has been
already said, the expression of the meaning in words; and its essence is the same both in
verse and prose.
Of the remaining elements Song holds the chief place among the embellishments.
The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the
least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we
may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of
spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the
poet.
… Plots are either Simple or Complex, for the actions in real life, of which the plots are
an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction. An action which is one and continuous
in the sense above defined, I call Simple, when the change of fortune takes place without
Reversal of the Situation and without Recognition
A Complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such Reversal, or by
Recognition, or by both. These last should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so
that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It
makes all the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post hoc.
Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite,
subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in Oedipus, the messenger
comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing
who he is, he produces the opposite effect.
Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing
love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The best
form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation, as in the Oedipus.
There are indeed other forms. Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a
sense be objects of recognition. Again, we may recognize or discover whether a person
has done a thing or not. But the recognition which is most intimately connected with the
plot and action is, as we have said, the recognition of persons. This recognition,
combined with Reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these
effects are those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents. Moreover, it is upon such
situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend. Recognition, then, being
between persons, it may happen that one person only is recognized by the other- when the
latter is already known- or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both
sides.

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