What makes Othello such a tragic figure is that it is not that he lacks virtue, but rather, he has too much of it. Othello is a play about a tragic hero whose heroism slowly unravels in a world that is frayed by love, friendship and his obsession with masculine honor (Zerba 2). Poetry comes thus from a controlled representation, and one of these forms of representation is the tragedy in which Shakespeare's Othello is a perfect example because it embodies all of the Aristotelian principles - such as reversal and recognition, the tragic hero and his tragic flaw, and complication and denouement. In trying to understand Aristotle's view on art, it is important to understand that it is "based on an equation of poetry with the process of representation, and not on any accidental quality such as meter" (142).
In the tragic form, imitation is made of a very controlled process where the different elements of action and character lead the spectator to have a certain insight into the meaning of what it is to be human (142).
Every form of art (qua imitation) can be compared in terms of the artistic means, object, and manner used in their creation. For Aristotle, what defines tragedy (and all art, in general) is in the way that it is imitation (Golden 142). It is in the Poetics that Aristotle defines the fundamental nature of tragedy. The course will be delivered via edX and connect learners around the world.Aristotle's Poetics is the most informative piece of work on the nature of art. From lectures filmed on-location in Venice, London, and Stratford-upon Avon to conversations with artists, academics, and librarians at Harvard, students will have unprecedented access to a range of resources for "unlocking" Shakespeare's classic play. By focusing on storytelling, we can see how the play grapples with larger issues including power, identity, and the boundary between fact and fiction. We'll consider, too, how actors, directors, composers, and other artists tell stories through Othello in performance. We'll look at the ways in which Shakespeare's characters tell stories within the play––about themselves, to themselves, and to each other. Rather, it is to find a single point of entry to help us think about the play as a whole. The goal of the course is not to cover everything that has been written on Othello.
In this course, we'll read William Shakespeare’s Othello and discuss the play from a variety of perspectives.
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