Improbability of Othello
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A01=Joel B. Altman
anthropology
argumentation
army
audience response
Author_Joel B. Altman
Category=DSBD
Category=DSG
desdemona
drama
dramatist
english literature
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
general
human affairs
humanity
iago
jealousy
literary criticism
othello
passion
persuasion
play
playwright
probability
race
racism
renaissance
representation
rhetoric
self
struggles
the moor of venice
tragedy
william shakespeare
Product details
- ISBN 9780226016108
- Weight: 765g
- Dimensions: 17 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 31 Jan 2010
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 - not certainty, governs human affairs. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare's theater. Focusing on the "Tragedy of Othello", Altman 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 Altman's account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences' probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster.
A monumental work of scholarship by one of America's most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, "The Improbability of Othello" contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare's conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
Joel B. Altman is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama.
