BIRTH, DEATH, REBIRTH IN THE SPLIT GEOGRAPHY OF OTHELLO
BIRTH, DEATH, REBIRTH IN THE SPLIT GEOGRAPHY OF OTHELLO

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to elevate the psycho geography of Venice, Cyprusand Barbery to discourse and mentality, to the characters’ use and reception of language: that of denotation (of law, order and logic), that of connotation (of enchantment, storytelling and wild passions). It attempts to explain how the lack of connotative awareness in some characters, like Desdemona, Othello, Roderigo,Emilia, Cassio, leads to their undoing. Birth, death and rebirth refer to the way in which some characters’ discourse (Iago’s, Othello’s) takes them to their destiny.Venice and the island of Cyprus are spaces in apparent opposition: an orderly one (Venice) and a wild one (Cyprus). Having reached its highly refined merchant society, architecture and Apollonian political organisation of Signoria by skilful,cunning politics, wars and commerce, riches looted or earned from the world, Venice has a hidden part of what Cyprus stands for in this play: bursting passion and violence and meandering discourse.The Venetian leaders’ rhetoric deals with denotation, law and order, the language of the literal word perceived as the only possible truth- unquestionable,undoubted in political decisions, matters of war, military strategies. Its argumentation contains logos and ethos: the masculine language of the power of the sword Othellois respected for and proud of. Il Doge, Iago, Roderigo, Cassio, senators know this language. That is why all men trust Iago’s words, without realising that in the city, at court, there is another type of battlefield with a different war weapon: the connotative discourse, full of pathos, flattery, double meanings, cheating and enchanting words.The Renaissance appreciated the power of rhetoric, more agile than the sword, able to tame and civilise, but with Iago, William Shakespeare warns about the dangerous side of rhetoric, its Cyprus violent manipulative damaging strategies of gaslighting, its Iagoism.

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