Course Info

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English 756 Othello Reading List 2006

[Do not be alarmed by the length of this bibliography, which is intended as a guide to resources rather than a prescriptive reading list. Because the list has been compiled from a variety of sources, bibliographic details may not always be complete, and some items may not be in the University Library: please let me know if you have difficulty getting hold of them. In the course of the semester some material will be placed in the folders held in the course cupboard (key available from secretaries). Of course the fact that a particular book or article is not included in this list does not necessarily imply judgement about its quality; and I'm always glad of information about items that might be added to the list.]

 

Prescribed Text

Othello, The Moor of Venice ed. Michael Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

 

Recommended Reading

Othello

(There are also good recent editions by Norman Sanders (Cambridge) and Ernst Honigman (New Arden); and an excellent Norton Critical edition, edited by Edward Pechter, which contains a good range of critical essays on the play. The introduction to the older Arden, edited by M.R. Ridley, is worth reading as an extraordinary document of unconscious racism).

Doris Adler, ``The Rhetoric of Black and White in Othello,' Shakespeare Quarterly 25 (1974)

Antony Gerard Barthelemy, Critical Essays on Shakespeare's 'Othello' (New York, 1994)

Graham Bradshaw, Misrepresentations: Shakespeare and the Materialists (Ithaca, 1993).

Emily C. Bartels, `Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and the Refashioning of Race,' Shakespeare Quarterly, 41 (1990)

Derek Cohen, `Patriarchy and Jealousy in Othello and The Winter's Tale,' MLQ 48 (1987), 207-23.

-- `Othello's Suicide' (copy available from MN)

Julie Hankey (ed.), Othello, Plays in Performance Series (Bristol, 1987 - updated edition 2005)

G.K. Hunter, `Othello and Colour Prejudice,' Proceedings of the British Academy 53 (1967)

Eldred Jones, Othello's Countrymen (London, 1965)

-- The Elizabethan Image of Africa (Washington, 1971)

G.M. Matthews, `Othello and the Dignity of Man,' in Arnold Kettle(ed.), Shakespeare in a Changing World (1964)

Michael Neill, `Changing Places in Othello,' Shakespeare Survey 37 (1984), 115-132*

-- `Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery and the Hideous in Othello,' Shakespeare Quarterly 40 (1989), 383-412*

-- '"Mulattos", "Blacks", and "Indian Moors": Othello and Early Modern Constructions of Human Difference,' Shakespeare Quarterly 49 (1998), 361- 74

*all three of these essays are reprinted in Putting History to the Question (New York, 2000

-- 'Opening the Moor: Death and Discovery in Othello,' in Neill, Issues of Death (Oxford, 1997), pp. 361-74

Karen Newman, '"And Wash the Ethiop White": Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello, in Jean Howard and Marion O'Connor (eds), Shakespeare Reproduced: the text in history and ideology (London, 1987), pp.143-62

Edward Pechter, Othello and Interpretative Traditions (Iowa, 1999)

Ian Smith, 'Barbarian Errors: Performing Race in Early Modern England,' Shakespeare Quarterly 49 (1998), 168-86

Edward A. Snow, `Sexual Anxiety and the Male Order of Things in Othello,' ELR 10 (1980), 384-412

Martin Orkin, `Othello and the "plain face' of Racism,' Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (1987), also in Orkin's Shakespeare Against Apartheid (1988)

Jyotsna Singh, `Shakespeare's Othello, African Identities, and Racial Conflicts,' (copy available from MN)

Emma Smith, Othello (Horndon, Devon: 2004)

Susan Snyder, Othello: Critical Essays (New York, 1988)

Virginia M. Vaughan & Kent Cartwright (eds.),'Othello': New Perspectives (London, 1991)

Virginia Mason Vaughan, 'Othello': A Contextual History (Cambridge, 1994)

Daniel J. Vitkus, "Turning Turk in Othello: the Conversion and Damnation of the Moor," Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (1997), 145-76

 

Gender, Race, and Discovery

Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Stanley Wells and Catherine Alexander (eds.), Shakespeare and Race (Cambridge, 2000)

Dympna Callaghan, Women & Gender in Renaissance Tragedy (New York, 1989)

Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker, Women, "Race", and Writing in the Early Modern Period (New York, 1993)

Heidi Hutner, Race and Culture in Stuart Drama (Oxford, 2001)

Ania Loomba, Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (London, 1989)

Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage (London, 2004)

Louis Montrose, `The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery', Representations 33 (Winter 1991), pp. 1-41 (this issue of the journal contains a number of other relevant essays)

Andrew Parker (et al.), Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992)

Gary Taylor, Buying Whiteness:Race, Culture, and Identity from Columbus to Hip- hop (New York, 2005)

 

The Islamic World and the East

Christopher Marlowe, 1&2 Tamburlaine

Nabil Matar (ed. and trans.), In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (London, 2003)

Anthony Parr (ed.), Three Renaissance Travel Plays (London, 1995)

Daniel Vitkus (ed.), Three Turk plays from early modern England : Selimus, A Christian turned Turk, and The Renegado (New York, 1999)

Richmond Barbour, Before Orientalism: London's Theatre of "the East", 1586-1636 (Cambridge, 2003)

Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579-24 (Newark: 2005)

Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire; the New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge, 2003)

Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558-1685 (New York, 1998)

-- Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the age of discovery (New York, 1999)

Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk : English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570-1630 (New York, 2003)

 

Some important C20th Productions, Adaptations, Appropriations etc.

Videos

Janet Suzman (dir.), Othello, The Market Theatre, Johannesburg (1988)

Laurence Olivier (dir.), Othello

Tim Blake Nelson (dir.), O. (2001). The Othello story translated to an American high school

Andrew Davies, Othello - a modern masterpiece (2002) A BBC television play in which 'John Othello' becomes London's first black Commissioner of Police.

 

Novels and Plays

Murray Carlin, Not Now, Sweet Desdemona (1967) -- East African play in which a black and a white South African actor rehearse Othello)

David Geary/Willie Davis/Theatre at Large, Savage Hearts/Manawa Taua (1995) (New Zealand play in which a C19 rangatira returns from England with a company of travelling actors to play Othello)

Anne-Marie Macdonald, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) - feminist rewriting of Othello + Romeo and Juliet.

Ken Mitchell (with Humphry and the Dumptrucks) Cruel Tears - a country opera (1973) - musical version.

Caryl Phillips, The Nature of Blood (1997) - novel by Anglo-Caribbean writer which reworks Othello

Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) -- complex fictional palimpsest which makes significant use of Othello.

Tayib Salih, Season of Migration to the North -- Sudanese novel which plays off Othello

Djanet Sears, Harlem Duet (1997) - reworking of Othello by black Canadian dramatist.