The Women of Othello There are only three female characters in Othello, and each plays a critical role in Shakespeare's artfully crafted plot of jealousy and retribution. Othello: I greet thy love, "), "An Archetype Criticism of Othello, a Play by William Shakespeare." 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. Frazers and Jungs texts formed the basis of two allied but ultimately different courses of influence on literary history. Rashness: The play is replete with rash decisions. This book established the priority of interest in the archetypal over the mythological. James Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account (1983), Re-Visioning Psychology (1975); C. G. Jung, Collected Works (ed. To furnish me with some swift means of death However, for Othello this is not the case. 2. 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. Of all Shakespeares tragedies . Hillman invokes Henri Corbin (1903-78), French scholar, philosopher, and mystic known for his work on Islam, as the second father of archetypal psychology. Literary Archetypes The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Loved One The Magus The Making of Americans The Man in the High Castle The Mayor of Casterbridge The Member of the Wedding The Metamorphosis The Natural The Plague The Plot Against America The Portrait of a Lady The Power of Sympathy The Red Badge of Courage The Road The Road from Coorain The term archetype can be traced to Plato (arche, original; typos, form), but the concept gained currency in twentieth-century literary theory and criticism through the work of the Swiss founder of analytical psychology, C. G. Jung (1875-1961). Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Analysis of Stuart Halls Encoding/Decoding, Jacques Derrida's Structure, Sign and Play. To The Reader Baudelaire Analysis; Used Dudek Universal For Sale; Is Ignatius J Reilly Autistic; Spring League Football Tryouts; marxist criticism in othello act 1 . Archetypal Criticism Volume I. I know not ift be true; But I, for mere suspicion in that kind, Will do as if for surety (2.1. 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. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with the profusion found in King Lear, but forming, as it were, the soul of a single character, and united with an intellectual superiority so great that he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Active Themes Emilia returns with Desdemona. Unfortunately, this got the ball rolling for Othello's inevitable downfall. Emilia comes into the couples bedroom after Othello smothers Desdemona, but hears Desdemona cry out. Issues of genre, period, and language were ignored or subjected to gross generalization as Jung searched for universals in texts as disparate as the fourth-century Shepherd of Hermas, the Divine Comedy, Francesco Colonnas Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), E. T. A. Hoffmans tales, Pierre Benoits LAtlantide (1919-20), and Henry Wadsworth Longfellows Hiawatha, as well as works by Carl Spitteler and William Blake. New theoretical approaches appear to legitimize orthodox Jungian ways of reading, sanction Jungs range of literary preferences from She to Faust, and support his highly affective reaction to Ulysses, which he himself identified (positively) as a subjective confession (i5:io9n). Egypt) and titles (e.g. Desdemona senses a change in Othello and she has a feeling that she will die soon due to the hands of Othello. That Cassios not alive. With some of its advocates supported through early publication of their work in the journal Spring, feminist archetypal theory and criticism of literature and the arts emerged fullblown in three texts: Annis Pratts Archetypal Patterns in Womens Fiction (1981), which self-consciously evoked and critiqued Maud Bodkins 1934 text; Estella Lauters Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth Century Women (1984); and Estella Lauter and Carol Schreier Rupprechts Feminist Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Visions of Jungian Thought (1985). Archetypal criticism ensures the efforts of all these concerned faculties to analyse of a text hence archetypal criticism is of immense significance. The intensity and focus of Othello is unalleviated by subplots, comic relief, or any mitigation or consolation for the deterioration of the noble Moor and his collapse into murder and suicide. At mid-century, Canadian critic Northrop Frye (1912-91) introduced new distinctions in literary criticism between myth and archetype. Myth criticism grew in part as a reaction to the formalism of New Criticism, while archetypal criticism based on Jung was never linked with any academic tradition and remained organically bound to its roots in depth psychology: the individual and collective psyche, dreams, and the analytic process. For more information on choosing credible sources for your paper, check out this blog post. "Now will I question assio of ianca, As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad; . 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. In Re-Visioning Psychology, the published text of his 1972 Yale Terry Lectures (the same lecture series Jung gave in 1937), Hillman locates the archetypal neither in the physiology of the brain, the structure of language, the organization of society, nor the analysis of behavior, but in the processes of imagination (xi). . Of one that loved not wisely but too well, What makes Othello so unique structurally (and painful to witness) is that it is a tragedy built on a comic foundation. Then must you speak The tragedy of Othello is not a fault of a single person, but is rather the consequence of a wide range of feelings, judgments, misjudgments, and attempts for personal justification revealed by the characters. He is the general of the Venetian army and a well respected man by the towns noble men. The archetypal characteris a simple character template recognizable to all readers. To you, preferring you before her father, Othello is generally regarded as Shakespeares greatest stage play, the closest he would ever come to conforming to the constrained rules of Aristotelian tragedy. Witness that here Iago doth give up 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. Kibin, 2023. http://www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-archetype-criticism-of-othello-a-play-by-william-shakespeare-yJF4zltX. He has already judged and condemned her, but he is still hunting evidence, seeking to justify to himself the stand he has already taken. I pray you, in your letters, 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. Othello was crafted at the dawn of the 17th century, shaped by complex social and geopolitical issues that new historicist critics, who seek to place literary works within a historical framework, have recently sought to unravel. No products in the cart. archetypal criticism in othello After confronting Desdemona of her crimes he decides to carry out his overall plan to end his trues loves life. Such characters can be found in works of fiction, long or short, and in more poetic works. What is striking about Shakespeares alteration of Cinthios grisly tale of murder and villainy is the shift of emphasis to the provocation for the murder, the ennobling of Othello as a figure of great stature and dignity to underscore his self-destruction, and the complication of motive for the ensigns actions. In Act 2, Scene 1 of Othello, Iago formulates his plan to drive Othello mad. Archetypal critics are also interested in certain myths and rituals that recur in a wide variety of cultures. Archetypal criticism proceeds from the initial assumption that every work of literature can be categorized and fitted into a large framework that encompasses all literature. Seeing her dying, Emilia asks who would do this. The men of the play manipulate her image of a naive lover to being a strumpet! (V.ii.94). Othello sends Emilia outside to guard the door. Even French feminist Julia Kristeva has been brought to praise a Jungian contribution to feminist discourse on the maternal: recognition that the Catholic churchs change of signification in the assumption of the Virgin Mary to include her human body represented a major shift in attitude toward female corporaiity (113). The contrast is most pronounced from the beginning of the play to its conclusion, switching from being calm and peaceful to acts of uncontrolled venomous rage. In his play, he portrays Othello like a tragic hero, a type of literary character. Othello must now face the realization of what he has done. Aristotles theory is not the final word on tragedy, however it can support in pinpointing the pivotal traits in. Even when Desdemona was found after Othello strangles her, she still believed that her death was not the fault of Othello. 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. Human emotions have a lot of power over how we react to situations in life, the trick is learning how to not let them take over. He carries out his own execution for a violation that threatens social and psychic order. According to Hillman, that discourse was anticipated by Evangelos Christous Logos of the Soul (1963) and extended in religion (David L. Millers New Polytheism, 1974), philosophy (Edward Caseys Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, 1976), mythology (Rafael Lopez-Pedrazas Hermes and His Children, 1977), psycholinguistics (Paul Kuglers Alchemy of Discourse: An Archetypal Approach to Language, 1982), and the theory of analysis (Patricia Berrys Echos Subtle Body, 1982). The first two acts of the play enact the standard pattern of Shakespeares romantic comedies. The approaches of semiologists, structuralists and deconstructivists . As the play progresses, and Iagos plan culminates, Othellos good fortune begins to turn. Olympus-high, and duck again as low Peopleshow more content An outburst that othello has in a crowd of his peers causes people to start to question their noble leader. This assignment is intended to encourage you, and require you . He seems to breathe an atmosphere as fateful as that of King Lear, but more confined and oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous room. Further, the text offered confirmation (and poetic representation) of the only direct contribution Jung made to literary theory: a distinction between psychological and visionary texts (Collected 15:89-90). An archetype is universal; it is generated by man's psyche regardless of time of place. Wow! 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. 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. Archetypal school of literary criticism is a type of literary criticism that is concerned with recurring myths and archetypes in symbols, characters, actions, and situations within literary pieces. The story opens on Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old growing up in the upper-middle class in England in 1953 with . The movie Zootopia uses animals to portray racism and sexism; predators do not like prey and vice versa. He interprets literature in the light of various rituals and myths. The play is set in Venice and Cyprus where a Moor, Othello, General of the Venetian army gets secretly married to a Venetian noblemans daughter, Desdemona. The play moves relentlessly from here to catastrophe as Othello delivers justice to those he is convinced have wronged him. Joseph P. Strelka, 1976); Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino DAcerino, eds., C. G. Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture (1990); Martin Bickman, The Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism (1980); Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies in Imagination (1934); Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957); Albert Gelpi, The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet (1975); Naomi Goldenberg, Archetypal Theory after Jung, Spring (1975); Julia Kristeva, Stabat Mater (1977, The Kristeva Reader, ed. Shakespeare shifts the action from Venice to Cyprus. Othello: Damn her, lewd minx! Both Desdemona and Othello defy by their words and gestures the calumnies heaped upon them by Roderigo and Brabantio and vindicate the imperatives of the heart over parental authority and custom. 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. Examples of Archetype in Shakespearean Works. Another important influence was Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who used the term archetype to what he called "primordial images". As in a typical Shakespearean comedy, love, tested, triumphs over all opposition. In his "The . 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. Using an archetypal literary criticism, Harry Potter can be analyzed by focusing on different archetypes, such as, symbols, images, and character types in the text. The tragedy of Othello is not a fault of a single villain, but is rather a consequence of a wide range of feelings, judgments and misjudgments, and attempts for personal justification exhibited by all of the participants. Archetypes Archetypal criticism focuses on patterns in a literary work that commonly occur in other literary works. 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. 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. 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 young Venetian noblewoman, Desdemona, has eloped with the middle-aged Othello, the military commander of the armed forces of Venice. Categories: Archetypal Criticism, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Myth Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Tags: Achetypes, Alchemy of Discourse: An Archetypal Approach to Language, Anatomy of Criticism, Archetypal Criticism, Archetypal feminist criticism, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, Archetypal Psychology, Archetypal Theory, Archetypal Theory and Criticism, Archetypal Theory Criticism, Claude Levi-Strauss, Ernst Cassirer, Evangelos Christou, Francis Fergusson, Frazer, Gilbert Durand, Henri Corbin, Hermes and His Children, Hillman, Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, J. G. Frazer, J. G. Frazer The Golden Bough, James Hillman, Jessie Weston, Joseph Campbell, Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture., Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious, Jungian Approach to Literature, Leslie Fiedler, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Logos of the Soul, Maud Bodkin, Myth, Myth theory and crticism, New Polytheism, Northrop Frye, Philip Wheelwright, Psychoanalysis, Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Richard Chase, Spring Journal, Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought, The Golden Bough, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Alchemy of Discourse: An Archetypal Approach to Language. A tragic hero is a hero nonetheless, but it all comes down to how they hold themselves together in the face of. Let him command, And to obey shall be in me remorse, They also attest to his self-confessed lack of interest in literature: I feel not naturally drawn to what one calls literature, but I am strangely attracted by genuine fiction, i.e., fantastical invention (Letters 1:509). I do perceive here a divided duty: This preview is partially blurred. Within these three days let me hear thee say Just another site. Kibin. 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. These patterns and themes, often referred to as archetypes, are believed to be present in the collective unconscious of all human beings . If after every tempest come such calms, This causes him to lose his ability to make good judgments and decisions. 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 . For Cassirer, reason alone cannot lead to truth, but mythical thinking which focuses on immediate experience is essential. Mythological Criticism and Archetypes BY: TO: AYTEKIN ALIYEVA Prof. SHAHIN KHALILLI. Patterns originate from the writer's . He is an individual of high stature who is destroyed by his surroundings, his own actions, and his fate. For the onlookers on stage, the final tableau of the dead Desdemona and Othello poisons sight and provokes the command to Let it be hid. The witnesses on stage cannot compute rationally what has occurred nor why, but the audience has been given a privileged view of the battle between good and evil worked out in the private recesses of a bedroom and a human soul. 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. Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, 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. 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. Iago: My friend is dead. Because of that, it has generated a lot of literary criticism in the 400 years since it was written and first . Nothing extenuate, O, farewell! (5. When he realizes the grave mistake he had made by taking an honest Desdemona's life he can no longer live with himself. The example essays in Kibin's library were written by real students for real classes. My soul hath content so absolute Northrop Frye, however, further developed this theory in his book Anatomy of Criticism and later in his essay 'The Archetypes in Literature . 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.