The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
Joel B. Altman
Abstract
Shakespeare's dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. This book explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare's theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, it investigates Shakespeare's representation of the self as a specif ... More
Shakespeare's dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. This book explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare's theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, it investigates Shakespeare's representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In this account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences' probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the sceptical critic and dramaturgic trickster.
Keywords:
Shakespeare,
supposition,
probability,
human affairs,
persuasion,
Renaissance,
self
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226016108 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226016122.001.0001 |
