Desecration and Veneration in Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale

Le résumé fourni par la source

This article argues that Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale display a Catholic sensibility toward beauty and the veneration of images. In Othello, Iago functions as the chief iconoclastic figure, one who desires to destroy the most beautiful and pure character in the play, Desdemona, a character who in many ways resembles the Virgin Mary. Iago poisons Othello's mind against Desdemona's beauty in an effort to make Othello question the very nature of beauty itself. Iago's actions mirror sixteenth-century iconoclasts who similarly sought to remove images and statues from Christian worship. Likewise, in The Winter's Tale, Leontes embraces iconoclastic rhetoric after he suspects Hermione has been unfaithful. But Hermione remains entirely without blame throughout the play, considered by everyone but Leontes to be a spotless queen. Like Desdemona, her character carries overtones with the Virgin Mary, and the final scene of the play suggests she functions as a statue-reliquary, a popular medieval devotion. The pilgrimage to Hermione's statue thus reverses Leontes’ iconoclasm and functions as a redemptive moment, suggesting the transformative power of beauty.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.