English 202: Final Paper Topic suggestions: Othello



McNamara

English 197

Topics for the final paper:

1. The spring of tragic action in Othello is, by and large, what the brilliantly duplicitous Iago says. In his interactions with others, Iago shows himself at his most treacherous in his ability to shift effortlessly between lying and truth-telling in order to deceive others. Your task in this essay is to examine occasions on which Iago speaks with this kind of doubleness, and trace in detail how it reveals unrecognized or perhaps even unsuspected attributes of the people to whom, or about whom, he speaks.

To begin this assignment, isolate the significant interactions between Iago and one or more characters of your choice. Look at these moments side-by-side and identify any patterns in Iago’s rhetoric. Your thesis should make a specific claim about (1) Iago’s rhetorical strategies in these interactions and (2) why these particular strategies are effective.

2. When Iago acquires Desdemona’s handkerchief, he names it as one of those “trifles light as air.” Furthermore, he also claims that it is these “trifles” that can become “confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (3.3.323-325). The handkerchief, we might say, works as a signifier, pointing to some concept in the mind of those who use it. But as a signifier, it has no stable connection to any particular signified -- what the handkerchief “represents” changes over time and from character to character. In your essay, show how the handkerchief develops as a signifier, exploring both what it means for those characters who use it, and what it comes to mean for us, the readers of the play.

In preparation for this topic, you may want to read the essay by Linda E. Boose, “Othello’s Handkerchief: The Recognizance and Pledge of Love.

3. In the play’s three couples, Othello and Desdemona, Iago and Emilia, and Cassio and Bianca, Shakespeare creates a kind of structural ring in which masculine and feminine gender roles are explored powerfully and subtly. Focusing on the female characters, write an essay in which you discuss precisely how female gender roles are handled.

You might begin asking whether you can identify a single role women are expected to fulfill or whether you can instead identify an array of expectations. How are women treated in relation to these expectations? Are they treated in the same ways by all male characters? How do they respond? Is any one woman representative of the feminine, or might it be more fruitful to consider Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca as representing different attributes of the feminine?

As you work through the play, be aware that Shakespeare’s handing of gender roles here is much more subtle than the commonplaces we might bring to it. To respond to this question well, you’ll need to resist the desire to come to familiar conclusions.

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