The new-historicist interventions: a reassemblage of masculine autonomy in william shakespeare’s othello

The article attempts to read Shakespeare in a New-Historicist perspective. We find Shakespeare’s Othello as a literary deviation of history. Consequently, the text is decentered on a contesting principle. By contest, we mean a reference to Shakespeare’s New-Historicist perception of history. Shakespeare contests and doubts the historical Othello who in fact led the readers into finding resemblances with King James I. In the process, even the Roman Emperor Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus who existed before Christ, comes into consideration.
The paper also negotiates Ferdinand de Saussure’s precept of signifier/signified as stable. Our understanding of Shakespeare’s Othello is that the signifier/signification of history is not stable. The Othello of history comes as improvised in Shakespeare’s text which ultimately decenters the masculine into a victim. Eventually, we find the literary production of Othello as having fixed Othello as a metaphor of victim. He is a victim of political hegemony. Hence, the article has its main focus on a character scrutiny of Othello. In the play, he is found to have been lost his historical credible masculine which ultimately disintegrates the domestic sphere and in that Othello unlike his historical allusions, is a victim. The article is confined to a thematic consideration of Othello’s character. A tri-dimensional pattern of existence has been evolved in terms of Othello’s relationship with Desdemona, his State and Iago.