Tying the Knot in Othello
2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 64; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/escrit/cgu011
ISSN1471-6852
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research
ResumoSOME OF THE MYSTERIOUS STRENGTH of Othello derives from the fact that powerful forces are at work even before the play opens. When, exactly, does the action of the play begin, and under whose initiative? Such questions arise equally with other tragedies, of course, but in some respects the most useful analogy comes from a comedy. When things reach an impasse in Twelfth Night – Viola's disguise has involved her in an impossible love triangle with Orsino and Olivia – the plot is represented as a knot: ‘O time, thou must untangle this, not I. / It is too hard a knot for me t'untie’.1 Viola's description resembles the scheme that Aristotle refers to as desis-lusis (tying and untying): ‘The [events] outside [the play], and often some inside [provide] the “tying”, the rest [is] the “untying”’.2 This scheme seems to be a revised version of the Poetics' earlier account of a unified action in tragedy as having a beginning, middle, and end. In George Whalley's view, it ‘implies a firmer and more comprehensive principle of unity in the plot’, for, Whalley goes on to explain, Here Aristotle recognizes that the poet selects an arche (both source and beginning …) from among the propepragmata (things done before) and makes this the starting point for his praxis; even though the starting point may be ‘outside’ – that is, not acted out in the play – it is nevertheless the point from which the arc or trajectory of the tragic action springs. … The ‘tying’, anchored outside the acted-action, is one moment (? or vector) of a single energy system, the ‘untying’ is the complementary moment.3
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