From fantasy to nightmare in Othello: self-fashioning and the politics of reception

• Juan A. Prieto-Pablos ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Sevilla

     Universidad de Sevilla

     Sevilla, España

     
• Localización: The Grove: Working papers on English studies, ISSN 1137-005X, Nº 13, 2006, págs. 93-114
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • With Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Stephen Greenblatt opened the path for a substantial and long-lasting avenue of criticism on the forces that shaped identity in Renaissance England. The programme for what he termed his “poetics of culture” was based on interpretive practices focused on three basic aspects which, he assumed, could be reflected inand therefore extracted from-a text: the manifestation of the author’s behaviour, the expression of specific codes of behaviour, and the critic’s reflection on those codes. This programme, however, leaves out an important element, namely, the impact that the text had, or was intended by the author to have, on the behaviour of its readers or spectators. The purpose of the present essay is to redraw Greenblatt’s programme by adding considerations on the interpretive practices undertaken by the intended recipients of a text. To do so, I will focus on the possible response of those who were part of the audience during the performance of Shakespeare’s Othello in Shakespeare’s own time, particularly on their response to the manner in which the question of self-identity is addressed in the play. My thesis is that Shakespeare’s play aimed to contain the widely circulating notion that social mobility is a desirable goal for the individual, and that he did so by reshaping the fantasy of the desire fullfilled into the nightmare of the self destroyed. The message thus transmitted to the audience would thus be construed as a warning against such desires. However, Shakespeare’s message could only succeed if the audiences were willing to agree with the principles underlying his warning; and this, in turn, is only possible if they saw themselves represented in, and were capable of empathizing with, Othello.

    Additional goals of this essay are therefore to analyze the ways in which empathy and identification could have been triggered and the circumstances that could permit it, and to consider the consequences that such effect could have on the audience’s final response to the play.

    Ultimately, this essay aims to show how Shakespeare’s awareness of the conditions of reception could determine the nature of his own ideological proposals.