Othello †where Imagery Abounds :: Othello essays

Othello where Imagery Abounds The playwright William Shakespeare included plentiful imagery in the tragedy Othello. In this endeavor we shall analyze and comment on what is offered in the play. H. S. Wilson in his book of literary criticism, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, discusses the influence of the imagery of the play It has indeed been suggested that the system of logic of events in the play and of Othellos relation to them implies Othellos damnation, and that the implication is pressed home with particular power in the imagery. This last amounts to interpreting the suggestions of the imagery as a means of comment by the author the analogy would be the choruses of Greek tragedy. It is true that the play contains many references to heaven and hell and devils. as Wilson cavalry has pointed out. But Mr. Knight has wisely refrained from drawing the conclusion that Shakespeare means thus to comment upon Othellos ultimate fate. (66) The vulgar imagery of the ancien t dominate the disruption of the play. Francis Ferguson in Two Worldviews Echo Each Other describes the types of imagery used by the antagonist when he slips his mask aside while awakening Brabantio Iago is allow loose the wicked passion inside him, as he does from time to time throughout the play, when he slips his mask aside. At such moments he invariably resorts to this imagery of money-bags, treachery, and animal lust and force play. So he expresses his own faithless, envious spirit, and, by the same token, his vision of the populous city of Venice Iagos world, as it has been called. . . .(132) standing(a) outside the senators home late at night, Iago uses imagery within a lie to arouse the occupant Awake what, ho, Brabantio thieves thieves thieves / Look to your house, your daughter and your bags When the senator appears at the window, the ancient continues with coarse imagery of animal lust Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is topping your white ewe, and youl l have your daughter cover with a Barbary horse youll have your nephews neigh to you youll have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans. Brabantio, judging from Iagos language, rightfully concludes that the latter is a profane wretch and a villain. When Iago returns to the Moor, he resorts to violence in his description of the senator, saying that nine or ten times / I had thought to have yerkd him here under the ribs.