"W's Tale" Notes from Monday Lecture

Conversation about Romance as a genre. Also called “tragicomedy.”

Tragic themes- jealousy, tyranny, incest (real or imagined)

Involves comic resolution—meaning marriage and prosperity

Action situated in longer period of time than other genres

General Structure or Pattern:

A king or duke errs—he and his family (esp. daughter figure) suffer—the resolution is family-based and usually brought about by the daughter somehow

Transgressions forgiven & future prosperity is promised

The transition occurs through the fantastic, the amazing, magic, the supernatural; the laws of nature are defied in this way

Improbable transformation of sorrow to joy

All about second chances

Key political issue = legitimacy, succession


Acts 1-3 enact a mini tragedy

Issues of male friendship, female sexuality, and tyranny

1.1 sets the tone—mood is situated between optimism and decline (like everything in life, really)

1.2- we see a situation different from the one described in 1.1; friendship in decline

“Feminine”- Latin for the weaker sex; traditionally believed to be guided by passion and not reason

p. 9 roots of Leontes’ jealousy uncertain. Hermione has come between he and his best friend & has accomplished what he could not. But it’s also what he asked her to do…

p. 16 Leontes making something out of nothing… out of his nightmare

p. 18 & p. 29- Leontes believes he is the only one capable of discerning truth; no room for reasoning with him; we cannot understand his inexpressible and insubstantial (not real) feelings and certainties

One major issue is perspective- ours, and those of characters (never a complete or unified vision; everyone’s perspective is unique and partial)

p. 25- no one in “Othello” is immune to Iago’s villany and Othello’s tragedy is related to the fact that he’s a victim of Iago

Leontes, on the other hand, inhabits a world that excludes the forces of Iago. It’s Leontes’ own mind that poisons itself [see spider imagery- “I have drunk”}

→ it’s not the presence of the spider that’s destructive, it’s the human imagination

p. 48 ironic truth in Leontes’ line “All that is true is mistrusted.” Leontes defines his own failing and self-deception.

Leontes is only person who fails to see that he is wrong.

Leontes becomes a blind tyrant… in a world where no real evil like Iago exists, except his own deceptions – thus there is a chance for true redemption

p. 51 Leontes uses a key term- “recreation”—re-creation, birth, regeneration… but it comes through weird stuff like the bear, who doesn’t kill the infant as we would expect

Theme of twinning and resemblance. “Art thou my boy?” asked twice in 1.2