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- Title
Conceiving Jealousy: Othello's Imitated Pregnancy.
- Authors
ROSS, MELANIE H.
- Abstract
This article argues that Othello maps rhetorical imitation onto obstetrical conception which Iago and Othello enact together. Renaissance conflations of breath, spoken language, “spirit” and seed allow for this literalisation of linguistic fertility, or copia, where Othello will swell pregnantly with Iago's “exsufflicate and blown surmises” (III.3.185). Othello, a surrogate for Shakespeare, chokes Desdemona to preserve the living status of his “conception” (V.2.55); but Shakespeare is also, by extension, attempting to strangle his own too-intense desire to be mother of a “living line”, to invoke Ben Jonson's well-known words on Shakespeare: “He who casts to write a living line must sweat.”
- Subjects
CRITICISM &; interpretation of Shakespeare's works; CHARACTERS of William Shakespeare; OTHELLO (Fictional character); IAGO (Fictional character); DESDEMONA (Fictional character); PREGNANCY in literature; HUMAN fertility in literature; LINGUISTICS
- Publication
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2005, Vol 41, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0015-8518
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fmls/cqi001