Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on Othello/Racism in the Renaissance. Have the paper e-mailed to you 24/7/365.
Essay / Research Paper Abstract
An 8 page research paper that explores how Othello reflects Elizabethan attitudes toward race. The writer argues that an examination of Renaissance English attitudes toward race demonstrates that Shakespeare's contemporaries held distinctly racist attitudes and preconceived prejudices, and that Shakespeare considered this aspect of his audience in writing Othello. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khracren.rtf
Buy This Term Paper »
Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
modifications necessary to individualize him" (139). As this suggests, Heilman sees Othellos black skin as nothing more than a distinguishing characteristic. Likewise, Jane Adamson asserts that Othellos Moorish background "matters
only in so far as it is part of a much larger and deeper" issue, which is the distinction in life between the "fated" and the "free" aspects of the
self," which again indicates an opinion that race is of little significance within the framework of the play (7-8). In direct contrast to these positions, an examination of Renaissance English
attitudes toward race demonstrates that Shakespeares contemporaries held distinctly racist attitudes and preconceived prejudices, and that Shakespeare considered this aspect of his audience in writing Othello. Edward Berry
draws on the work of Tzvatan Todorov to explain the European perspective on the "other," that is peoples outside the norm of the European perspective. Todorov argues that Spanish explorers
and missionaries tended to view Native Americans in one of two ways (Berry 315). Either they saw them as either as "people," which they interpreted to be essentially the same
as Europeans, and, therefore, worthy of assimilation, or they saw them as different and, therefore, inferior, and worthy of either enslavement or destruction (Berry 315). In other words, according
to Todorov, the Spaniards could not conceive of the Native Americans as "equally human but culturally different" (Berry 315). The Europeans were not capable of seeing other cultures as
worthy in their own right. Therefore, they could only project their own values onto the native peoples they encountered. For them, culturally different native peoples were either not fully human,
or, if they were seen as human, they were viewed as latent Europeans, simply awaiting Christianity and the benefits of European civilization. Berry argues that Todorovs perspective provides a
...