The Improbability of Othello
Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
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, probabilityāwhat they and others might be persuaded to believeāgoverns human affairs, not certainty. 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.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue. āAs If for Suretyā: The Problematics of Shakespearean Probability
- Part I. Toward a Rhetorical Genealogy of Othello
- Part II. The Logic of Renaissance Rhetoric
- Part III. Willful Words, Christian Anxieties, and Shakespearean Dramaturgy
- Part IV. Tropings of the Self in Shakespeareās Scripts
- Part V. Performing the Improbable Other on Shakespeareās Stage
- Epilogue. āMake Not Impossible / That Which But Seems Unlikeā: The Twilight of Probability and the Dawn of Shakespearean Romance
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index