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Othello and the Formalism of Compulsion
- New Literary History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 54, Number 4, Autumn 2024
- pp. 1613-1635
- 10.1353/nlh.2024.a922188
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
I use the term “formalism” to name the tendency of compulsion to reduce experience, through repetition, to a simple shape, rhythm, and intensity. This essay shows how compulsion’s reduction of the self to just a few characteristics enables—even solicits—analogy across different contexts. Focusing on Othello, I consider several aspects of Shakespeare’s staging of compulsion: the two-way traffic between religious and secular domains; the splitting of the self, which often entails the projection of the self onto others; and the role of such splitting in the representation of racialized violence.