Unit 3: Vocabulary from Readings 2

What we find is not one image of the Moroccan, but many images, from the dangerously inscrutable alien to the exotically attractive ally.

But traditional images of the Moor as black devil, Islamic infidel, or oriental despot were certainly drawn on to articulate what the traders and diplomats experienced.

The theatrical representation of the Moor, while shaped in part by the traditional anti-Islam polemic, or the characterization of the black man as devil, also reshapes those traditions.

Yet the representation of the Moor could also lead the dramatist and the audience beyond a comfortable sense of superiority or the superficial titillation provided by a darkly alien villain.

Yet the representation of the Moor could also lead the dramatist and the audience beyond a comfortable sense of superiority or the superficial titillation provided by a darkly alien villain.

Or power could be sought in ways acceptable to society, as was the case for Othello, who could seem “fair” both within his dark exterior and within the Venetian state because of his military prowess.

The audience that witnessed the struggle for self-control and the insidious powers that transform Othello would confront the destructiveness of its own collective perceptions of race, religion, and cultural difference.

The opposition between Roman reason and the darkly feminine otherness and fertility of Egypt is but one variation on this conflict between different conceptions of power and order.

Traditional definitions of Western norms and of the others who deviated from those norms provided a groundwork for curiosity, or a base of operations for exploration and exploitation.

The Moor's difference was something established by tradition, and the Moor was a sign of spatial distance, a creature from a distant place.

It is unsettling and also exciting to feel the ground of assumptions shift, as is the case in travel, when the norm is not your norm, when dress, speech, food, and the details of life reflect a difference that places you at the margin, reduced to a sign of deviation from the norm.

Although he was the leading Othello of the period and was much praised, the only informative contemporary account of his performance in the role tells us little more than that his aspect was serious, venerable, and majestic.

Quick in motion as in thought; lithe and sinuous as a snake.

A certain bluffness (which my temperament does not afford) should be added to preserve the military flavor of the character; in this particular I fail utterly, my Iago lacks the soldierly quality.

...Othello is not so much a heroic figure—the noble Moor who gains our sympathy despite the terrible deed he performs—as a fatuous simpleton, a man given to egotistical self-dramatizing.

Still, although much in the conception could be faulted, it was widely agreed that Olivier’s acting was a triumph—a triumph won, among other things, at the expense of an unprepossessing Iago and a negligible Desdemona.

Still, although much in the conception could be faulted, it was widely agreed that Olivier’s acting was a triumph—a triumph won, among other things, at the expense of an unprepossessing Iago and a negligible Desdemona.