Jung and the Humanities: Toward a Hermeneutics of Culture. As scholar Edward Pechter has argued, During the past twenty-five years or so, Othello has become the Shakespearean tragedy of choice, replacing King Lear in the way Lear had earlier replaced Hamlet as the play that speaks most directly and powerfully to current interests.. Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away 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. I am hitherto your daughter. Desperate to cling to the security of his former identity as a soldier while his current identity as a lover crumbles, Othello begins to confuse the one with the other. Carl Jungs Contribution to Psychoanalytic Theory. As Othello came to his breaking point, desdemona foreshadows her own death and he lets jealousy take over. Othello: Damn her, lewd minx! The major work of Frye's to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism but his essay The Archetypes of Literature is a precursor to the book. Archetypal critics are also interested in certain myths and rituals that recur in a wide variety of cultures. Shakespeare's play, Othello, the Moor of Venice, is a powerful example of a tragedy and its main character, Othello, is an excellent illustration of what Aristotle constitutes as a tragic hero. Beat a Venetian and tradud the state, Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory. Instead, they blame him for his own ultimate ruin. "In Sidney's view, tragedy provokes "the affects of admiration and commiseration" and so demonstrates "the uncertainty of this world". That such a man should fall so far and so fast gives the play an almost unbearable momentum. Consistent with his role as guardian of order in the state, Othello carries out his own execution, by analogy judging his act as a violation reflected by Venices savage enemy: And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Let him command, And to obey shall be in me remorse, the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Othello assumes that Emilia is helping Desdemona in her infidelity. Archetypal criticism, then, construed as that derived from Jungs theory and practice of archetypal (analytical) psychology, is a fledgling and much misconstrued field of inquiry with significant but still unrealized potential for the study of literature and of aesthetics in general. Unfortunately, this got the ball rolling for Othellos inevitable downfall. Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous, Shakespeare often focuses his plays on human nature as well as fate, which Othellos fate ended in the tragic ending due to his reversal of fortune once the claims against Desdemona begin. Home Archetypal Criticism Archetypal Criticism, By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 22, 2020 ( 0 ). Sign up (V.2.316, 323) It is beyond a doubt Othello's fault that all of this wreckage befalls him, and his still has not had a moment of recognition of his failures at reasoning and understanding. Placing responsibility in the stars - he calls Desdemona an "ill-starred wench" - is hardly a gallant course of action. Nothing extenuate, 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 . Abstract. Archetypal criticism, then, construed as that derived from Jung's theory and practice of archetypal (analytical) psychology, is a fledgling and much misconstrued field of inquiry with significant but still unrealized potential for the study of literature and of aesthetics in general. 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. I pray you, in your letters, Iago leads Othello to suspect that love and devotion are shams disguising the basest of animalistic instincts. Othello, though, decides to kill her. These patterns include persistent images, figures, and story patterns shared by people across diverse 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. Indeed, myth criticism seems singularly unaffected by any of the archetypal theorists who have remained faithful to the origins and traditions of depth, especially analytical, psychologyJames Hillman, Henri Corbin, Gilbert Durand, Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Evangelos Christou. Othello relies easily on Iago to believe without being thought deeply. The men of the play manipulate her image of a naive lover to being a strumpet! (V.ii.94). 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. If Hamlet is a tragedy about youth, and Lear concerns old age, Othello is a family or domestic tragedy of a middle-aged man in which the fate of kingdoms and the cosmos that hangs in the balance in Hamlet and Lear contracts to the private world of a marriages destruction. Othello accused her of being unfaithful, when she never was. By the end of the play, he has brought down his world around him with the relentless force that made him a great general turned inward, destroying both what he loved best in another and in himself. In his major work, The Anatomy of Criticism, he states: 'I mean by an archetype a symbol which connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and integrate our . And it is thought abroad that twixt my sheets Hes done my office. As mine own face. Aristotles theory is not the final word on tragedy, however it can support in pinpointing the pivotal traits in. I do perceive here a divided duty: To wronged Othellos service. The character of Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised. Frye frequently acknowledged his debt to Jung, accepted some of Jungs specifically named archetypes persona and anima and counsellor and shadow and referred to his theory as Jungian criticism (Anatomy 291), a practice subsequently followed in some hand books of literary terms and histories of literary criticism, including one edited by Frye himself, which obscured crucial differences and contributed to the confusion in terminology reigning today. Looking at William Shakespeare's Othello The Moor Of Venice, the central character, Othello is revered as the tragic hero. Desdemonas true morals is her absolute devotion to her husband. The play imitates life through basic human emotions such as jealousy and rage. Feminist archetypal theory, proceeding inductively, restored Jungs original emphasis on the fluid, dynamic nature of the archetype, drawing on earlier feminist theory as well as the work of Jungian Erich Neumann to reject absolutist, ahistorical, essentialist, and transcendentalist misinterpretations. 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. Cultural criticism is exploring or examining the relationship of dominant role based on ethnicity, and sexual identity of person, also a great understanding of yourself. Marxist criticism would also have offered a distinctive way of looking at Othello. This book established the priority of interest in the archetypal over the mythological. An example, is that they had to overcome a huge obstacle such as love because Othello and Desdemona were in love but her father did not approve of it. The Critical Analysis Of A Novel: Atonement By Ian Mcewan Atonement by Ian McEwan is a literary masterpiece and a highly critically acclaimed novel. Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. When he realizes the grave mistake he had made by taking an honest Desdemona's life he can no longer live with himself. Rashness: The play is replete with rash decisions. Aristotle believed that the plot is the most important element in a play and that plot also clearly points out the problem of any characters to be solved. Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Mythological critics compare one work to others with similar story . Misled by the handkerchief, his love token to Desdemona, that Iago has planted in Cassios room and by a partially overheard conversation between Iago and Cassio, Othello, by the end of act 3, forsakes his wife and engages himself in a perverse version of the marriage ceremony of act 2 to Iago. He suffers barbs and preconceived notions, yet Othello is esteemed and wins the love of the daughter of a nobleman. Othello: I greet thy love, Despite his deliberately selective focus on critical works written in English on literary texts that are, for the most part, also written in English, van Meurs, with the early assistance of John Kidd, has collected 902 entries, of which he identifies slightly over 80 as valid and valuable literary criticism. 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. Othello, likewise, has tradud the state and has changed from noble and valiant Othello to a beast, with the passion that ennobled him shown as corrosive and demeaning. The moment he showed violence towards Desdemona, the audience lost interest in comforting Othello. Within these three days let me hear thee say If after every tempest come such calms, Jung was also more preoccupied with dreams and fantasies, because he saw them as exclusively (purely) products of the unconscious, in contrast to literature, which he oddly believed, citing Joyces Ulysses as an example, was created in the full light of consciousness (15:123). Then must you speak His final speech mixes together the acknowledgment of what he was and what he has become, who he is and how he would like to be remembered: I have done the state some service, and they knowt. 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. 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. When citing an essay from our library, you can use "Kibin" as the author. "Othello is essentially an noble character, flawed by insecurity and a nature that is naive and unsophisticated". Succeeds in unknown fate. Archetypal Criticism Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. Ironically, as in the feminist revisioning of explicitly male-biased Jungian theory, the rise in the 1980s of Reader-response theory and criticism and the impetus for canon revision have begun to contribute to a revaluation of Jung as a source of literary study. An archetype is the original pattern or . During the play Iago manipulates Othello because Lieutenant Cassio was promoted ahead of him, and also because he suspects that Othello has had an affair with his wife. The critical annotations are astute and, given their brevity, surprisingly thorough and suggestive. 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. From the theorists, dissertations, articles, and books, often traditionally academic in orientation, appeared; the productions of the practitioners are chronicled and critiqued in van Meurss bibliography. As he attempts to carry out his execution of Desdemona, she for the first time realizes his charges against her and his utter delusion. Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. A tragic hero is a hero nonetheless, but it all comes down to how they hold themselves together in the face of. Farewell / Commend me to my kind lord. "He is, in a sense, a 'self made man', the . Essays may be lightly modified for readability or to protect the anonymity of contributors, but we do not edit essay examples prior to publication. Aristotles second requirement for a tragedy is that the tragic hero must have a reversal of fortune. 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). Abstract. My life and education both do learn me Othello, unlike the other Shakespearean comedies, adds three more acts to the romantic drama, shifting from comic affirmation to tragic negation. archetypal criticism in othello america undercover life of crime Juni 12, 2022. used kawai upright piano . "Who can control his fate?" However, the protagonist of the tragedy play only partially meets the definition of Aristotles tragic hero. May the wind blow till they have wakened death, The formerly self-sufficient Othello has now staked his life to his faith in Desdemona and their union, and she has done the same. Frye, then, first misinterprets Jungian theory by insisting on a Lamarckian view of genetic transmission of archetypes, which Jung explicitly rejected, and later settles on a concept of archetype as a literary occurrence per se, an exclusively intertextual recurring phenomenon resembling a convention (99). Othello makes an error in judgement, which leads to his change in fortune, and later realizes that his actions are what caused said change in fortune. Reading example essays works the same way! OTHELLO: My name, that was as fresh. Despite this, Desdemona continued to stay true to Othello. On a general level, Jungs and Fryes theorizings about archetypes, however labeled, overlap, and boundaries are elusive, but in the disciplines of literature the two schools have largely ignored each others work. And so much duty as my mother showd . Citations Consider the implications of this idea. In Shakespeare's, An outburst that othello has in a crowd of his peers causes people to start to question their noble leader. Tis done at your request; but let her live. In the essay Frye critically analyses literature against the backdrop of rituals and myths. Commend me to my kind lord. Frye's work helped displace New Criticism as the major mode of analyzing literary texts . If we carefully examine the third scene in the third act, we can see how Othello fits into Aristotle's definition of tragic hero. The three women are Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca. 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 . Let us know! 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). No more of that. Othello A Christian Moor who has earned a high reputation as a general in the Venetian army and has recently married Desdemona, daughter of the Venetian senator Brabantio. For the fair devil. The concept of the archetype is a venerable philosophical principle that came into new prominence and usage in the twentieth century with the development of archetypal literary criticism through the theories of psychologist C. G. Jung and literary theorist Northrop Frye. After confronting Desdemona of her crimes he decides to carry out his overall plan to end his trues loves life. . Many fell prey to Jungs idiosyncrasies as a reader, ranging widely and naively over genres, periods, and languages in search of the universal archetypes, while sweeping aside cultureand text-specific problems, ignoring their own role in the act of reading and basing critical evaluation solely on a texts contribution to the advancement of the readers individuation process, a kind of literature-astherapy standard. Othello is a tragedy plan written by William Shakespeare. In Othello, the themes such as love and jealousy reflects on the characters motivation and their values. : In this quote, Othello is stating that his wife's supposed infidelity has ruined his name and turned it "black" and dirty like his own face, showing that a woman's fidelity was linked to a man's honor. Othello is a complex play that deals with issues such as jealousy, gender, and race. to view the complete essay. Moreover, Shakespeare, by deliberately clouding the issue of Iagos motive, finds ever more sinister threats in such a characters apparently bottomless and unmerited hatred and capacity for evil. While adding to the tone of the story it also adds to the characters overall personality from the reader's perspective. 364-367). It has been mentioned earlier that pattern in literature refers to recurrent images, forms and words. R. F. C. Hull, 2 vois., 1973-75). 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). Witness that here Iago doth give up 1924) to move beyond clinical inquiry within the consulting room of psychotherapy to formulate archetypal theory as a multidisciplinary field (Archetypal 1). Kibin does not guarantee the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the essays in the library; essay content should not be construed as advice. Othello is generally regarded as Shakespeares greatest stage play, the closest he would ever come to conforming to the constrained rules of Aristotelian tragedy. The first systematic application of Jungs ideas to literature was made in 1934 by Maud Bodkin in Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: An attempt is here made to bring psychological analysis and reflection to bear upon the imaginative experience communicated by great poetry, and to examine those forms or patterns in which the universal forces of our nature there find objectification (vii). Othello, being a hero, enjoys a good reputation and has notable qualities. Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Othello demonstrates all of these characteristics in the play, proving him to be a tragic hero. In. Hillman also discovers archetypal precursors in Neoplatonism, Heraclitus, Plotinus, Proclus, Marsilio Ficino, and Giambattista Vico. Macbeth) in the essay title portion of your citation. Frazers and Jungs texts formed the basis of two allied but ultimately different courses of influence on literary history. Earnest Cassirer, a social anthropologist was an important influence on myth criticism. Jung most frequently used myth (or mythologem) for the narrative expression, on the ethnological level (Collected 9, pt. "Othello", by William Shakespeare, is a story of jealousy's potential to manipulate thoughts and eventually lead to ultimate demise. Vindicated by the duke of Venice and the senate, Othello, accompanied by Desdemona, takes up his military duties in the face of a threatened Turkish invasion, and the lovers are given a triumphal wedding-like procession and marriage ceremony when they disembark on Cyprus. Emilia comes into the couples bedroom after Othello smothers Desdemona, but hears Desdemona cry out. / Man but a rush against Othello's breast / And he retires." 2. Considered according to this definition, the concept becomes a useful tool for literary analysis that explores the synthesis of the universal and the particular, seeks to define the parameters of social construction of gender, and attempts to construct theories of language, of the imaginal, and of meaning that take gender into account. Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, Altho a tragic ending it may be, Othello couldn't stand being a such a fool to have believed such lies about his one and only love. This allows our team to focus on improving the library and adding new essays. In addition, many powerfully heuristic Jungian concepts, such as synchronicity, have yet to be tested in literary contexts. Further, Jung termed his own theory analytical psychology, as it is still known especially in Europe, but Jungian thought is more commonly referred to today in all disciplines as archetypal psychology.. I took by th throat the circumcisd dog, He ends up killing her out of jealousy; when she does not deserve it. The present essay, "Archetypes of Literature," is taken from the book. 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). Come, go with me apart. 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. The critic is at the center of interpretive activity, and the critic functions as teacher, interpreter, priest, seer. The story opens on Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old growing up in the upper-middle class in England in 1953 with . The approaches of semiologists, structuralists and deconstructivists . Othello as a character of noble blood seems to conform to all these. . This heuristic distinction was formed, however, solely on psychobiographical grounds: Did the text originate in, and remain principally shaped by, the authors experience of consciousness and the personal unconscious or his or her experience at the level of the archetypal collective unconscious? His destruction is essentially precipitated by his own actions, as well as by the actions of the characters surrounding him. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler, 20 vois., 1953-79), Letters (trans. In addition, Othello is far from being a perfect character - another quality that meets Aristotle's requirements. He is a character of high stature that is destroyed by his surroundings, his own actions, and his fate. Due to the Moor, my lord. Archetypal analysis is an appropriate model for customer heterogeneity whenever the underlying structure is best defined by the extremes.