The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood

Description

Shakespeare's dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability-what they and others might be persuaded to believe-governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare's theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare's rep.;Acknowledgments; Prologue / ""As If for Surety"": The Problematics of Shakespearean Probability; Part I. Toward a Rhetorical Genealogy of Othello; One / ""My Parts, My Title, and My Perfect Soul"": Ingenuity, Apodeixis, and the Origins of Rhetorical Anthropology; Two / ""Against My Estimation"": Ciceronian Decorum, Stoic Constancy, and the Production of Ethos; Part II. The Logic of Renaissance Rhetoric; Three / ""Apt and True"": Speech, World, and Thought in Shakespeare's Humanist Dialectic; Four / ""Yonder's Foul Murders Done"": Place, Predicament, and Grammatical Space on Cyprus. Acknowledgments Prologue / ""As If for Surety"": The Problematics of Shakespearean Probability Part I. Toward a Rhetorical Genealogy of Othello One / ""My Parts, My Title, and My Perfect Soul"": Ingenuity, Apodeixis, and the Origins of Rhetorical Anthropology Two / ""Against My Estimation"": Ciceronian Decorum, Stoic Constancy, and the Production of Ethos Part II. The Logic of Renaissance Rhetoric Three / ""Apt and True"": Speech, World, and Thought in Shakespeare's Humanist Dialectic Four / ""Yonder's Foul Murders Done"": Place, Predicament, and Grammatical Space on Cyprus. Part III. Willful Words, Christian Anxieties, and Shakespearean DramaturgyFive / ""'Tis in Ourselves That We Are Thus, or Thus"": Will, Habit, and the Discourse of Res Six / ""Preposterous Conclusions"": Eros, Enargeia, and Composition in Othello Seven / ""Prophetic Fury"": The Language of Theatrical Potentiality and the Economy of Shakespearean Reception Part IV. Tropings of the Self in Shakespeare's Scripts Eight / ""I Am Not What I Am"": Shakespeare's Scripted Subject Nine / ""Nobody. I Myself"": Discovering What Passes Show. Part V. Performing the Improbable Other on Shakespeare's StageTen / ""Were I the Moor, I Would Not Be Iago"": Ligatures of Self and Stranger Eleven / ""It Is Not Words That Shakes Me Thus"": Burbage, as if Othello Epilogue / ""Make Not Impossible/That Which But Seems Unlike"": The Twilight of Probability and the Dawn of Shakespearean Romance Notes Bibliography Index.