University of Virginia professor Paul Cantor, curator of the Shakespeare and Politics website (thegreatthinker..., in the first of three lectures on Othello.
I’m a junior professor of English and ESL at a community college and I’m moving into the public schools as an English teacher in Texas this fall. I’ve been studying the Shakespeare classics and these lectures are just what I’ve been needing. Brilliant analysis and approach! Well appreciated 👏👏
Thank you for sharing these insights. I found the comments regarding Othello’s qualms about domesticity most interesting although I’m not convinced with the ‘nagging’ argument. Is it not Othello’s inability to articulate his jealousy that’s in play here rather than Desdemona being a nagging wife?
On the professor's opening note--how he avoids contemporary political comparisons because he's never found a proper systematic analysis of those comparisons--If this interests you, I highly recommend a book called "Free WIll: Art and Power on Shakespeare's stage" as just such a systematic analysis. While I find Paul Cantor's lectures super insightful and helpful for understanding the material, his claim that "Shakespeare wasn't writing historical allegories for his own period" is pretty wild--what writer doesn't engage with the politics of the time they're living in? To those of us reading them four hundred years later, it's very easy to see the broad cosmic/philosophical wisdom of Shakespeare's work, and much harder to access the contemporary social significance of his plays due to lack of context. WIlson's book is all about that contemporary context, and it's pretty cool stuff, if you can stomach his highfalutin academic writing style.
Yeah, the professor isn't easy to fathom on that score. The essence of his lecture series seems to be that if one spends time reading Shakespeare in the 21st, then one must do so with ulterior motive in mind. As I commented to a lecture on A+C, sometimes he seems to be teaching spin and bootstrapping. In the final analysis tho, his overbroad knowledge and very close reading of the actual test is intimidating.
Enjoyed the Professor's closing remarks on "Hamlet." He laments that directors still assume Fortinbras arrives as a hostile, which is extra-textual. They tied nicely to his opening remarks on some of his favorite movie versions (personally I think Gibson's Hamlet is the best presentation of the new action-hero Hamlet of Act V). That said, it's amusing that for such a difficult play there are so many excellent productions of it.
@@rdaniel9751thumos is generally translated as spiritedness. It’s the inner force that spurs you to action and leaves your body when you die. It’s all over Homer.
Hike Masters firstly, in English, I don't support trump... and secondly, you have come onto a literature lecture video on Othello which NATURALLY will be critical of meanings and interpretations of the text and say you don't think Shakespeare intended for the play to be pulled apart like this. The nature of literature itself encourages critical analysis on plays, so literally wtf
