Books and articles are commonly used sources of information, stories and literary ideas. There’s no doubt that they are great and incredibly useful, however it’s good to remember that there are other sources for you to use: video lectures and podcasts for just a couple of examples!
That being said, today I’m going to be sharing with you some of these featuring Toni Morrison. She was a Nobel Prize Winning author, essayist, book editor, and college professor and discusses and presents some of my favourite literary ideas – many of them surrounding Black history and the representation of Black people, especially women, in literature. She also may be the author of one of your set texts! Here are some lectures containing her theories:
The man behind the myth – demoniac, manipulating, the Antichrist? These are all associated with Niccolò Machiavelli, Shakespeare’s basis for Iago.
Whilst we might use ‘Machiavellian’ to describe Othello’s chief villain, the description seems to be more in reference to the legend behind his name rather than the man himself.
Born in Florence in 1469, Machiavelli surrounded himself with politics at a young age. He did not belong to the Florentine elite, and was therefore practically unelectable. Machiavelli was acutely aware of the prejudices surrounding his lower station so, instead of pursuing power, he became a critic of it.
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
Niccolò Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
Machivelli’s critical lens exposed the most influential family in Florence – a family who enforced their regime by commanding the most sacred post in Europe. Related to two particularly corrupt Popes, the House of Medici would ultimately be outcast from Florence. Despite this, Machiavelli would still be remembered as encouraging corruption, rather than dismantling it.
Ironically, the hierarchical fear of Machiavelli’s cutting satire against corruption would twist his legacy into an adjective synonymous with ‘corrupt’.
Here’s a supplementary essay…
Explore how Shakespeare presents the character of Othello
Essay written 17th June 2021 for End of Year Examinations (Year 12). The essay received 30/35 (18/21, 12/14)
Throughout the play, Shakespeare uses the character of Othello to show his audience the barbaric pressure on outsiders living in a society that does not accept or understand them. Exploring the stereotypes of Moors in Elizabethan and Jacobean society, Shakespeare ultimately presents Othello as a Moor whose outsider-status leaves him vulnerable to manipulation and unable to cope under the lens of Shakespeare’s Venice.
Firstly, Othello is presented as an outsider. Coming from North Africa, Othello is left susceptible to racial prejudices throughout the play, most poignantly in Act 1 Scene 1, where Iago, the Machiavellian Villain, crafts a bestial image when speaking to Desdemona’s father. He informs Brabantio that ‘now, now, very now, an old black ram/ Is tupping your white ewe’. This is one of the first comments that introduces the audience to the character of Othello, without him even being there. Could Shakespeare be educating his audience that, because of his race, Othello us unable to define his own identity? Loomba writes that Venice’s openness would have been seen as ‘dangerous by a society [London] itself fairly suspicious of outsiders’ The metaphor ‘black ram’ enforces Othello’s outsider status, as the term black sheep is often used to describe those who do not belong and are not welcome in society. Loomba argues that Othello’s origins would have made him appear ‘dangerous’ to contemporary Jacobean society, and I would agree with him, if Venice is to be viewed as a foil for London, as Iago plays on the narrative of this danger by the juxtaposing between ‘black’ and ‘white’. Not only is Othello an outsider, but also seen as being completely other to Venice. The line break between ‘black ram’ and ‘is tupping’ further supports the argument of Othello’s separation from society, or Iago’s desire to separate him further from society. This is where I would disagree with Loomba and emphasise that this society was not only ‘fairly suspicious’ but, rather, empathically opposed to the inclusion of outsiders into contemporary London, especially after Elizabeth I’s attempted expulsion of black people from England during her reign (‘those kinde of people should be sente forthe of the land’). The violent verb ‘tupping’ is also embellished with the stereotype of the Moor being aggressive and lusty. Because this description contrasts with the Othello that we meet later on in Act 1 (an Othello who speaks of Venetian acceptance, and a noble man who ‘invited me [him]’), Othello meets the tragic trope, seen in many of Shakespeare’s tragedies, of being misunderstood by the society which would ultimately turn on him. Shakespeare’s choice to not let Othello define himself to the audience is not just symptomatic of the play’s beginning, but even into the later stages of the dramatic arc when Iago interrupts his soliloquy. Othello is completely defined by Iago’s language and Iago’s perversion of the truth. Shakespeare could be using this haunting study on the horrific consequences of being a vulnerable outsider in Venice, and London by extension, to education his audience on the destructive power of their own prejudices. Shakespeare challenges his audience to think not just what they hear, but to escape the barriers of their own racism. It is Othello’s inability to cope with the stereotype that surrounds him that leads to the destruction of his marriage with Desdemona.
Secondly, Shakespeare presents Othello as being torn between the dual concepts of being a warrior and a lover. When Desdemona greets him in Cyprus, Othello names her ‘my fair warrior’. Although Shakespeare covers this with the façade of a harmless term of endearment, one could argue that the possessive pronoun ‘my’ implies that Othello feels that he had dominion and ownership over his new wife. Here, Othello has already begun to fall into the stereotype of the Moor, one of which is known to have been the oppression of women. However, the possessive pronoun could also suggest the love shared between Othello and Desdemona, juxtaposing completely with the lascivious and purely sexual relationship that Iago describes in scene one. The noun ‘warrior’, however, seems to bring a purely loving marriage into question. The noun evokes feelings of strife and death, perhaps dwelling on the elopement that brought the two together, unbeknownst to Desdemona’s father. Shakespeare could be suggesting that Othello cannot distinguish between being a lover and a warrior, and not only does Shakespeare let him be defined by other characters, might he be implying that Othello is almost unable to define himself, knowing his warrior-status as thus far being the only thing to build his Venetian reputation? Here, Shakespeare presents Othello as having a rootless identity and is perhaps already predisposed for tragedy because of his lack of experience in a society so unforgiving to outsiders. This relationship with Desdemona is destined to fail as he cannot find balance between love and war, and therefore only deals in absolutes when it comes to his romance. It is, of course, a love destroyed both by lack of identity and Othello’s poisonous jealously.
Lastly, Othello is presented as being a character who is easily manipulated into jealousy. Shakespeare uses ‘the handkerchief’ as a symbol of love between Othello and Desdemona. It is this ‘handkerchief’ that Iago used to manipulate Othello into believing that Desdemona has committed adultery. Because of his lack of a solidified identity and misunderstanding of Venetian courtship, Iago is able to completely derail Othello in Act 3 Scene 3. Iago activated poisonous intend within Othello, who soon begins to repeat Iago’s idiomatic language such as ‘honesty’. Loomba writes that Othello is ‘predisposed to believe that women are false’, and whilst he does come to believe Iago at a very rapid speed, it does not seem that he is predisposed to. It might in fact be Iago’s perversion of the ‘handkerchief’, shifting its pure symbolism into being emblematic of lies and deceit that curves Othello into believing nothing else but what he sees before his eyes, an ocular proof that Iago provides him with the handkerchief. To the character of Othello, everything looses meaning, a moment that acts as the peripeteia in his tragic arc. It might be argued that Othello’s hamartia is jealousy, but it seems to be more arguable that Othello’s legacy is tarnished most by his mistrust in unreliable villains. Iago’s manipulation of the purity of language is further shown by his use of ‘honesty’, said forty-nine times throughout the play. The semantic field of trust is soon embedded into Othello’s own language, symbolising the crushing defeat of manipulation over purity. Whilst Rymer could argue that the handkerchief plot is ‘farcical’, it could also be said that it becomes a reminder of how easily outsiders’ lives can be destroyed into oblivion.
To conclude, Shakespeare uses Othello to educate his audience on being an outsider. Ultimately, Othello is presented as a Moor whose unrooted individualism leaves him vulnerable and unarmed for Venetian life.
Born to a family of moderate means in 1757, Blake grew up in a London where he could still wander, a London almost unchanged since the days of Shakespeare. Yet, unknown to him, this was a London on the verge of industrialisation.
He laments on this dramatic shift in his poems of Experience, specifically in ‘London’ (1794), where his wanderings no longer open up a world of curiosity, but one of deprivation left unvoiced by the churning of politics and rigidity of false religion.
“I wander thro’ each charter’d street”
William Blake, ‘London’
Still, Blake was a highly spiritual man, embroiling his artistry with his understanding of the biblical message through the lens of gnostic mysticism (Gnostics believed that they held an esoteric insight into the realm of the heavens, sighting this insight as the spiritual illumination that sparked the transcendence into a greater understanding of the cosmos. They dealt in illusion and enlightenment rather than sin and redemption).
It was this new understanding that Blake believed allowed him to see the malakhim. He told a friend that he once saw ‘a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.’ It is this insight that Blake muses in ‘The Tyger’ (1794), where he wears the skin of the divine, echoing the passage beginning with Job 41 v. 12, presenting the mythical Tyger to his very human reader. In this poem, Blake brings the imagination to the centre of the early Romantic movement, forcing its reader to evaluate the overstepping of humanity and the corruption of industry and greed.
With ‘The Tyger’, the Songs of Experience more clearly become contraries to the Songs of Innocence, written earlier on in Blake’s canon. In contrast to the ideas of purity expressed in ‘The Lamb’ (1789), ‘The Tyger’ mocks the ignorance of its contrary animal, sitting just on the unknown ellipse of the veil between heaven and earth, watching the smoking cogs of industrialism move in manacles around Blake’s decadent London. With the Songs of Experience, Blake’s poetry becomes perhaps the truest analysis of Rousseau’s ‘Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains’ from ‘The Social Contract’ (1762).
“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”
William Blake, ‘The Tyger’
Blake makes further satire of feigned religion in ‘Holy Thursday’ (Innocence, 1789), where the cold structure of false charity is made chillingly obvious by the distorted celebrations of the gospels’ Last Supper. Blake, in the poem, goes as far as to compare the acts of the church to the betrayal of Judas.
For the entirety of his adult life, Blake campaigned against organised religion, even following Emmanuel Swedenborg. Once enthusiastic about Swedenborgianism, Blake attended the first General Conference of the New Jerusalem Church in 1789. However, as soon as Blake began to notice the signs of organised faith within his friend, the poet soon turned on him in the sardonic poem ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ (1790).
Blake’s unchanging ideals on Social Action carried through into the Songs of Experience. Appalled at the poverty in his once blessed city of London, Blake wrote the contrary ‘Holy Thursday’ (Experience, 1794). Making further allusions to the gospels, specifically the Parables of Christ, Blake envisages a world without the suffering of children – children neglected by the industrialisation of London. These two poems also engrain his canon with a feeling of hope, one not expressed in ‘London’ (1794).
It is Blake’s need to give voice to the suffering that explains why, whether by design or accident, Blake found himself at the front of the mob that burnt down Newgate Prison.
The influence of Wollstonecraft also embeds itself on the Songs of Experience, specifically in ‘The Sick Rose’ (1794), where Blake challenges the secrecy of the prostitution industry and the deaths of unknowing women due to sexually transmitted infections. The power in his poetry explains why Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of the arts, whilst being largely unrecognised during his lifetime.
Margaret Atwood has just published her sequel to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ called ‘The Testaments’. It may be worth a read / find some articles on it to enhance your textual context!
Articles are a really useful way to find information for context as well as pertinent arguments for your essays. The more you understand about the texts, the easier it will be to bash out essays!
Here’s a list of articles I found particularly interesting, followed by condensed notes that I hope you’ll find helpful. (Please take a chance to read the article BEFORE you read the notes in case anything is unclear).
The ones I have marked *** are super useful (in my opinion)
Simone de Beauvoir was a very prominent French philosopher of the 20th century. One of her most famous works was a book called ‘The Second Sex’, which provided an analysis of the position of women throughout history. It influenced many writers during the 20th century and since, including Margaret Atwood and Carol Ann Duffy. If you are studying ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘The World’s Wife’, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, or any other text which provides a feminist angle, ‘The Second Sex’ may be worth a read (or at least a few chapters).
I made notes on the Introduction and First Chapter to give you an idea of the ideas explored in the book – there are some very good quotes to provide a feminist/literary context analysis for your texts (especially Handmaid’s).
The following are articles focused on 3 different aspects of the novel and its contextual influences – the symbolism of spiders, the journalism industry (explains many of the literary techniques in the novel) and the origin of the form of the invasion story:
These notes are a collation of research about Surrey, the setting of the novel, in the late 19th – early 20th century. Try to relate the impact of the events (such as industrial expansion and multiculturalism) to events in the book – e.g. industrial expansion, which Wells was against, influenced the technologically superior martians and their easy destruction of humanity (a metaphor for wells’ prediction of the impact of industry).
These are my notes on War of the Worlds (most of which came from Mrs R) – most of the techniques in the novel are used in the first 11 or so chapters of the novel and hence repeated after that. I hope they are still helpful.
Articles are a really useful way to find information for context as well as pertinent arguments for your essays. The more you understand about the texts, the easier it will be to bash out essays!
Here’s a list of articles I found particularly interesting, followed by condensed notes that I hope you’ll find helpful. (Please take a chance to read the article BEFORE you read the notes in case anything is unclear).
Aposiopesis – To deliberately break off mid-sentence, so that the ending is left to be imagined.
Epizeuxis – repetition of a word or phrase, with no words in between, for emphasis. e.g. Blanche – Scene 1: “Never, never, never”
Euphemism – An indirect expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing. e.g. Blanche never explicitly talks about sex or homosexuality. Always uses romantic, soft words.
These are a few juicy articles I found helpful when looking for better understanding/essay arguments, critics and context. There are tons available online, so if you’re struggling with a certain concept of the play, try and find an article related to it on google.
WymCol English Blog 