Othello and Heroism Essay -- Othello essays

Othello and gallantry In William Shakespeargons tragedy Othello the audience finds heroism exhibited not only by the hero, the Moor, but also by other characters in the drama. A. C. Bradley, in his book of literary criticism, Shakespeargonan Tragedy, defines a woman character, Desdemona, as a hero in the play from the very outset There is peradventure a certain excuse for our failure to rise to Shakespeares meaning, and to body forth how extraordinary and splendid a thing it was in a low Venetian girl to recognize Othello, and to assail fortune with such a downright violence and storm as is expected only in a hero. It is that when first we hear of her marriage we have not barely seen the Desdemona of the later Acts and therefore we do not perceive how astonishing this love and boldness must have been in a maiden so quiet and submissive. (191) A characters attitude toward the most afraid(predicate) foe death itself is unquestionably a criterion for judging a heroic typ e from a non-heroic type. Helen Gardner in Othello A Tragedy of steady and Fortune considers Iagos wife genus genus Emilia to be a reliable hero of the play because of her fearless outlook on death itself Emilias silence while her mistress lived is fully explicable in terms of her character. She shares with her husband the generalizing trick and is well used to domestic scenes. The jealous, she knows, are not ever jealous for the cause precisely jealous for they are jealous. If it was not the handkerchief it would be something else. Why disobey her husband and peril his furore? It would not do any good. This is what men are like. But Desdemona dead sweeps away all such generalities and all caution. At this sight, Emilia ... ...y large and grand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of lastingness which in repose ensures pre-eminence without an effort, and in commotion reminds us rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common human passion. (168) WORKS CITED Bradley, A. C.. Shakespearean Tragedy. New York Penguin, 1991. Gardner, Helen. Othello A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from The Noble Moor. British honorary society Lectures, no. 9, 1955. Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http//www.eiu.edu/multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos. Wilson, H. S. On the aim of Shakespearean Tragedy. Canada University of Toronto Press, 1957.