• Archetypal Definition

Part of the book series (TCD) Abstract There are more distinctive critical approaches than can conveniently be focused upon in a study of less than voluminous proportions. This selection attempts simply to suggest a number of ways that might be helpful to the study of Othello. Rather than touch upon it indirectly under other heads (as here under ‘Historical and social criticism’), there are clearly possibilities for a thoroughgoing Christian approach. Because so much critical attention has been concentrated upon Othello and Iago, Desdemona has received scant justice, and, although an attempt will be made in Part Two to remedy that, a feminist approach would doubtless have presented a different balance.

Archetypal Definition

Marxist criticism would also have offered a distinctive way of looking at Othello. One excellent example of such an approach, G. Matthews’s ‘ Othello and the Dignity of Man’, has been referred to at the end of the section devoted to historical and social criticism.

The approaches of semiologists, structuralists and deconstructivists might all have been given attention.