Friendship or Sodomy? : The Equivocations of Male Alliance in Othello

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Other Title
  • 友情か、ソドミーか? : 『オセロ』にみる男同士の絆に潜む二枚舌
  • ユウジョウ カ ソドミー カ オセロ ニ ミル オトコ ドウシ ノ キズナ ニ ヒソム ニマイジタ

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紀要論文

In the studies of William Shakespeare's Othello, Iago's latent homosexuality has been discussed since the mid-twentieth century. This kind of investigation, however, is criticized for nothing more than motive-hunting of Iago's malignity and taking homosexuality as pathology. Recent sexuality studies, which have brought to light various aspects of male alliance in early modern England, show that physical intimacies between men in those days were far from pathology but rather admired as "friendship." On the other hand, "sodomy" was condemned even though it seems that the acts of "sodomy" actually had little difference from the very acts that Englishmen regarded as "friendship" ; the accusation of sodomy might be considered as one of the political manipulations concerning class, gender, race, and nationality. If the play represents Iago's desire as ambiguously at once "sodomy" and "friendship," the play can be interpreted to reveal the equivocations involved in the system of male alliance. This article, which reconsiders Iago's homosexual desire for Othello in the cultural and political context of early modern En\ gland, reexamines, thereby, a historical moment in which Otherness was being constructed through discourse of sodomy.

Journal

  • 人間文化論叢

    人間文化論叢 8 85-93, 2005

    お茶の水女子大学大学院人間文化研究科

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