Othello

by Peter Hobley Davison

Even productions of Othello based on very different conceptions of the play can prove successful ad deeply moving. Among critics, however, Othello has roused furous critical disagreement, remarkable for the degree of animosity exposed. After an Introduction in which the problems of analysing this play are outlined, Peter Davison considers six critical approaches to Othello : Genre, Historical and Social, Dramatic Convention and Decorum, Character and Psychological, the Play as Dramatic Poem, and Archetypal Criticism. In the second part of this study, Professor Davison offers his own, contextual approach. He takes into account the historical and social context in which the play was written, the context of the play in performance, and the context in which contemporary audiences see and read Othello . He also provides a guide for further reading.

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 8, 1988

About the author

Professor Peter Hobley Davison, OBE, Ph.D., D.Litt., Hon. D. Arts, was formerly fellow of the Shakespeare institute and Professor of English at St David’s University College and the University of Kent, and is Senior Research Fellow in English and Media at De Montfort University, Leicester. As well as being the author of seven books and of numerous academic articles and reviews, he published editions of half a dozen plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Davison was considered an authority on the life and works of George Orwell and has published the Facsimile Edition of the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as three collections. The final eleven volumes of his twenty-volume-edition of the Complete Works of George Orwell were published in 1998. From 1971 to 1982 he was editor of the journal of the Bibliographical Society, The Library, and from 1992 to 1994 was the Society’s President. He received the Society's Gold Medal in 2003.