...virtue fall.” He applied this profound observation to the characters of his play Othello, the story of an interracial marriage destroyed by manipulation. In this tragedy, the title character Othello falls from his status as a respected, even glorified, leader to an incredulous murderer, while his “friend” Iago thrives on Othello’s downfall. Shakespeare’s original script illustrates Othello’s vulnerability and destruction quite obviously, while more modern interpretations take a vaguer approach. The 1995 feature film Othello and the video adaption of Verdi’s opera Otello both serve as prime examples of how Othello’s demise can be interpreted, and present all characters in varying light. Between these three versions of Shakespeare’s play, the original work presents Othello’s change most clearly. In it, Othello’s transition from “good” to “bad” is very apparent. Shakespeare portrays Othello as a simplified human, perhaps to make him more relatable in vagueness, and in so doing makes his deterioration obvious. At the beginning of the play, the Duke addresses Othello as “Valiant Othello,” and values his advice on political matters (1.3.50). At this time, Othello (though disrespected on the issue of race) is a prized presence in his country and among his peers. His bravery is matched by his character, as he loves his wife and “puts [his] life upon her faith!” (1.3.293). He represents the ultimate human being, both successful and honorable without falling into a godly category. This...
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...Othello as a Tragic Hero William Shakespeare's famous tragedy Othello, the Moor of is arguably one of the finest, if not the finest, tragedies in the literary history of Western civilization. This paper discusses Othello as a tragic hero and compares him to Aristotle's concept of what a tragic hero actually is. First, we need to understand the characteristics of a so-called tragic hero as defined by the Greek critic, Aristotle. He indicates that a tragic hero must have these characteristics: (1) Be a nobleman, prince, or person of high estate; (2) Have a tragic flaw, and a weakness in judgment; and (3) Fall from high to low estate. Using Aristotle’s criteria, we can easily classify Othello, the Moor, as a tragic hero. At the time, it was common practice for the Italian city-states to have a foreigner, with proven military capabilities, serving as the head of their Army. Othello, an African Moor of noble birth, is just such a character and held the highest ranking military position as Governor-General of Cyprus. The city of Cyprus was a city-state in the great state of Venice. His title alone, Governor-General, exudes an air of nobility, confidence, and strength. It defines someone who is held in tremendously high esteem by the people of Venice. During Act 1, Scene 3, the Duke and a few Senators are discussing issues around a table when Othello enters the room. It's clear that Othello is held in high esteem when, as he enters, one of the senators states “Here comes Barbantio...
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...11/02/2015 Research Paper Othello Othello is a famous tragedy written by William Shakespeare as a Tragic Hero. The Moor is arguably one of the finest, if not the finest, tragedies in the literary history of the Western Civilization. In this paper I will discuss Othello as a tragic hero and compare his to Aristotle’s concept of what a tragic hero is actually is. The characteristic of a tragic hero is defined by the Greek critic, is determined by three characteristics. According to Aristotle a tragic hero must be 1) Be a nobleman, prince, or person of high estate; 2) Have a tragic flaw, and a weakness of in judgment; and 3) Fall from high to low estate Using the criteria’s above which was established by Aristotle, we can effortlessly classify Othello, the Moor, as a tragic hero. At the time, it was common for the practice for the Italian city-sates that have a foreigner, with proven military capabilities, serving as the head of their army. Othello, an African Moor of noble birth, is just such a character and held the highest-ranking position in the military as a Governor –General of Cyprus. The city of Cyprus was a city-state in the Venice. Othello’s title alone, Governor-General, emanates an air of nobility, confidence, and strength. It defines someone who is held in remarkably high esteem by the people of Venice. During Act 1, Scene 3, the Duke and a few Senators are discussing issues around a table when Othello enters the room. It is clear that Othello is held in high esteem...
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...The Ambivalence of Human Nature Othello—one of Shakespeare’s more dreadful tragedies, tragedy of an un-heroic egotistical fool, a tragedy that shows how both good and evil are summed up within a person and how manipulation and ambivalence are stronger than love and logic together. The play opens with Othello and Desdemona, a newlywed couple in Venice and Iago, a man jealous and envious of Othello and his newly appointed lieutenant Cassio. In his jealousy, Iago destroys not only Othello and Cassio but virtually all the other characters in the play including his own wife, Emilia. The story of this play represents the classic battle between the forces of good and evil leading to the ultimate triumph of evil over good with the demise of other characters in the play. There is a pattern of good and evil closely that can be identified to the three main personages in the play: Iago with Evil, Desdemona as good and Othello as good overthrown. Iago is represented as the wrath of evil in the play. He uses his cunning, untrustworthy and selfish traits to manipulate the minds of Roderigo, Cassio and Othello and confidently moves the plot forward. Iago is jealous and envious of Michael Cassio and believes that Othello has wronged his honour by terming Michael Cassio as the lieutenant and him as the ancient of the army. He believes that Michael Cassio “that never set a squadron in the field/ nor the division of a battle knows” (1.1.22-3) is less deserving than him for the position. His...
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...Richard II (1372-99). It gained a literary standard in London English after 1425 and developed modern forms of verse, prose and of Drama. The conquest of England in 1066 by William of Normandy displaced English as medium of literature. The language of new rulers was French. Saxons dealing with the King had to learn French and French was the language of court and the law for three centuries. Four genres of Middle English are: i. 1. Fabliau 2. Lyric 3. Dream Allegory 4. Ballad Geoffrey Chaucer Chaucer is the best story teller and the narrative poet. Chaucer tells his stories in a most effective way. He has the knack of transforming an old tale into a new one in such a manner that its appeal increases manifold and its human interest becomes perennial (lasting/permanent). An important feature of Chaucer's descriptive power is that his individual portrait also represents the type. Initially perhaps the sketches were devised to provide representatives of the chief classes of English society under the higher nobility. The portraits of the pilgrims are not all drawn in the same way. It is true that Chaucer...
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...FOREIGN LANGUAGES LOVE AND TIME IN SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS GRADUATE: SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR: -2016- Important aspects about William Shakespeare William Shakespeare, English dramatist and poet He is considered the greatest writer of the English language literature of all time The first one (until approximately 1598) belongs to a series of pieces in which youth girded Shakespeare’s current fashions, adapting issues to public taste In the second Shakespearean stage, which runs from 1598-1604, are located the pieces often called "middle works", characterized by a higher stage virtuosity Dramas Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Othello announce the next period, known as the great tragedies (1604-1608), in which Shakespeare delves into the deepest feelings of the human being The final phase (1608-1611) shines his latest masterpiece, The Tempest, in which fantasy and reality intermingle offering a testimony of wisdom and acceptance of death. •Human vision (caught in the passion play); •Relationship with the company and provided genius; •Nature, love and art - universal ways of saving time and evil attack. Sonnets give the feeling and eventually even convince the reader to visit a temple and understands that the priest officiating the ritual union between text and reading is a creature with a special expertise whereof modern poetry can not even have the feeble idea ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S MOST REPRESENTATIVES SONNETS Critics...
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...invokes sympathy in the audience by creating characters of extreme feminine virtue such as Cordelia, Miranda. However, Shakespeare often creates ambiguous emotions in the audience by introducing an element of intelligence and boldness in the case of Isabella and Desdemona. Despite the relative insignificance of women in Elisabethan social order, Shakespeare uses them in many significant ways. He seems to be extremely sensitive to the importance of women in society even though they are often overlooked. The idea that men are often a product of the women in their lives is indirectly suggested in the significant impact women have on men in the plays. Isabella has a profound influence in the lives of Angelo and Claudio; Desdemona, by no true fault of...
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...Bloom’s Classic Critical Views W i l l ia m Sha k e Sp e a r e Bloom's Classic Critical Views alfred, lord Tennyson Benjamin Franklin The Brontës Charles Dickens edgar allan poe Geoffrey Chaucer George eliot George Gordon, lord Byron henry David Thoreau herman melville Jane austen John Donne and the metaphysical poets John milton Jonathan Swift mark Twain mary Shelley Nathaniel hawthorne Oscar Wilde percy Shelley ralph Waldo emerson robert Browning Samuel Taylor Coleridge Stephen Crane Walt Whitman William Blake William Shakespeare William Wordsworth Bloom’s Classic Critical Views W i l l ia m Sha k e Sp e a r e Edited and with an Introduction by Sterling professor of the humanities Yale University harold Bloom Bloom’s Classic Critical Views: William Shakespeare Copyright © 2010 Infobase Publishing Introduction © 2010 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information contact: Bloom’s Literary Criticism An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data William Shakespeare / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom : Neil Heims, volume editor. p. cm. — (Bloom’s classic critical views) Includes bibliographical references...
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...ANALYZING NOVELS & SHORT STORy Good feedback is kind, thorough and timely. It’s professional and focused. It leaves the writer feeling challenged to do better but great about their strengths. Even if that just means the location they chose was cool. Give your feedback relative to the skill set of the writer. Never lie or obfuscate. Just serve it up gently. An upset writer isn’t going to hear your points anyway. But an encouraged one will. Trust me on this. — Julie Gray PRINTER FRIENDLY PAGE Literary analysis looks critically at a work of fiction in order to understand how the parts contribute to the whole. When analyzing a novel or short story, you’ll need to consider elements such as the context, setting, characters, plot, literary devices, and themes. Remember that a literary analysis isn’t merely a summary or review, but rather an interpretation of the work and an argument about it based on the text. Depending on your assignment, you might argue about the work’s meaning or why it causes certain reader reactions. This handout will help you analyze a short story or novel—use it to form a thesis, or argument, for your essay. Summary Begin by summarizing the basic plot: “Matilda by Roald Dahl is about a gifted little girl in small town America who learns to make things move with her mind and saves her teacher and school from the evil principal.” This will help ground you in the story. (When you write your paper, you probably won’t include a summary because your readers...
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...Hamlet’s Melancholy Critics of Shakespeare’s Hamlet have debated, discussed, and thoroughly pondered the meaning of Hamlet’s inaction in the play and what drives him in his thoughts and actions. Many speculate that Hamlet’s inaction is caused by a number of obstacles throughout the play, but through careful inspection of Hamlet at his very worst and very best, one can see that obstacles are not the problem with his inability to act—it is the constant state of melancholy he is thrown into by the events that ultimately ruin his life. Hamlet, having just lost his father, is not given time or sympathy for his much-needed grieving; and this, in turn initiates his melancholic state that controls his actions and motives to the very end of the play (Kirsch 17). Throughout the play one can see that Hamlet never once loses possession over those qualities that make him such a noble character. Even in his most tumultuous state he has healthy and positive feelings: a strong love of his father, longing for revenge, and disgust of his uncle and the deed he committed (Bradley 142). So, though Hamlet is not in his normal state, he is not distressed beyond reason and any obstacle that would not prevent him from acting before certainly should not now. The conclusion is inevitably that Hamlet is in a state of melancholy because of what has just happened. His healthy motives combined with the overwhelming feelings of melancholic aversion and lethargy create a seemingly unattainable mode...
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...Music: Lady Gaga, jZ, Tupak, Michael Jackson, Jim Reeves, Jimmy Hendricks, Literary Circles: Before Shakespeare the great names in literature were: o Homer – Ancient times - well known for his great epics o Dante – Middle Ages – wrote brilliantly on circumstances of human existence o Aristotle – the great philosopher ENTER SHAKESPEARE – THE LITERARY GIANT Spelling of Shakespeare: Spelling not yet standardized, thus name spelled in different ways • Shakespeare, Shakspere, Shackspere, Shaxper, Shagspere, Shaxberd, etc. Shakespeare: The most well known playwright of Elizabethan times is Shakespeare. But there were also other writers who in their time were just as, or even more famous than him. WHAT MAKES SHAKESPEARE STAND OUT? – The volume of his works Plays firmly attributed to Shakespeare ■ 14 COMEDIES – funny play – with amusing events – ended in marriage / or happily o Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing… ■ 10 HISTORIES – Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV… ■ 10 TRAGEDIES – ends in death ← Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Julius Caesar… ■ 4 Romances – ( chivalry and love) Pericles,...
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...might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point--a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of...
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...Министерство образования и науки Республики Казахстан Кокшетауский государственный университет им. Ш. Уалиханова An Outline of British Literature (from tradition to post modernism) Кокшетау 2011 УДК 802.0 – 5:20 ББК 81:432.1-923 № 39 Рекомендовано к печати кафедрой английского языка и МП КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, Ученым Советом филологического факультета КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, УМС КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова. Рецензенты: Баяндина С.Ж. доктор филологических наук, профессор, декан филологического факультета КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова Батаева Ф.А. кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры «Переводческое дело» Кокшетауского университета им. А. Мырзахметова Кожанова К.Т. преподаватель английского языка кафедры гуманитарного цикла ИПК и ПРО Акмолинской области An Outline of British Literature from tradition to post modernism (on specialties 050119 – “Foreign Language: Two Foreign Languages”, 050205 – “Foreign Philology” and 050207 – “Translation”): Учебное пособие / Сост. Немченко Н.Ф. – Кокшетау: Типография КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, 2010 – 170 с. ISBN 9965-19-350-9 Пособие представляет собой краткие очерки, характеризующие английскую литературу Великобритании, ее основные направления и тенденции. Все известные направления в литературе иллюстрированы примерами жизни и творчества авторов, вошедших в мировую литературу благодаря...
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...H. L. Turpin Release Date: September 4, 2005 [EBook #16643] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS *** 1 Essays Produced by Curtis A. Weyant , Sankar Viswanathan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net ESSAYS BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON Merrill's English Texts SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY EDNA H.L. TURPIN, AUTHOR OF "STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY," "CLASSIC FABLES," "FAMOUS PAINTERS," ETC. NEW YORK CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 1907 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION LIFE OF EMERSON CRITICAL OPINIONS CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR COMPENSATION SELF RELIANCE FRIENDSHIP HEROISM MANNERS GIFTS NATURE SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET PRUDENCE CIRCLES NOTES PUBLISHERS' NOTE Merrill's English Texts 2 Essays 3 This series of books will include in complete editions those masterpieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use of schools and colleges. The editors of the several volumes will be chosen for their special qualifications in connection with the texts to be issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship, will characterize the editing of every book in the series. In connection with each text, a critical and historical introduction, including a sketch of the life of the author and...
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...SECOND DRAFT Contents Preamble Chapter 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Background Rationale Aims Interface with the Junior Secondary Curriculum Principles of Curriculum Design Chapter 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 1 Introduction Literature in English Curriculum Framework Strands and Learning Targets Learning Objectives Generic Skills Values and Attitudes Broad Learning Outcomes Chapter 3 5 7 9 10 11 11 13 Curriculum Planning 3.1 Planning a Balanced and Flexible Curriculum 3.2 Central Curriculum and School-based Curriculum Development 3.2.1 Integrating Classroom Learning and Independent Learning 3.2.2 Maximizing Learning Opportunities 3.2.3 Cross-curricular Planning 3.2.4 Building a Learning Community through Flexible Class Organization 3.3 Collaboration within the English Language Education KLA and Cross KLA Links 3.4 Time Allocation 3.5 Progression of Studies 3.6 Managing the Curriculum – Role of Curriculum Leaders Chapter 4 1 2 2 3 3 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 21 Learning and Teaching 4.1 Approaches to Learning and Teaching 4.1.1 Introductory Comments 4.1.2 Prose Fiction 4.1.3 Poetry i 21 21 23 32 SECOND DRAFT 4.1.4 Drama 4.1.5 Films 4.1.6 Literary Appreciation 4.1.7 Schools of Literary Criticism 4.2 Catering for Learner Diversity 4.3 Meaningful Homework 4.4 Role of Learners Chapter 5 41 45 52 69 71 72 73 74 Assessment 5.1 Guiding Principles 5.2 Internal Assessment 5.2.1 Formative Assessment 5.2.2 Summative Assessment 5.3 Public Assessment 5.3.1 Standards-referenced...
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