Historical Humanity In Shakespeare’s Othello

The previous studies on Shakespeare’s Othello mainly focus on two aspects:humanism and historicity. Either from humanism or historicity, a contradiction of the reasons of the tragedy in Shakespeare’s Othello arises. The present thesis believes that Othello does not facilitate a comparison between universal humanity and historicity but leads us to a possibility of taking the two as a totality to the knowledge of reality. Therefore, the present thesis tries to evaluate Shakespeare’s Othello with historical humanity as the topic of the study and Georg’s theory of totality as the approach to the study.This thesis contains four chapters in main body. As the theoretical foundation, Chapter 1 discusses the theory of totality of Georg Lukacs in philosophy and embodies it in the historical humanity in literature. We draw the conclusion that only when the fragment facts are regarded as totality in development of historical process, can knowledge of facts progress into knowledge of reality. Based on theory of totality, the other three chapters analyze Othello from three sectors:typical characters, typical environments and natural relations. Chapter 2 analyzes historical humanity in context of Venice as epitome of the past and illustrates the blood bond metabolic changes comprises to the social relations represented by the Desdemona’s obedience to Othello instead of her father. Chapter 3 demonstrates historical humanity in context of Cyprus as epitome of the present and shows that social relations are deconstructed by the features in metabolic changes symbolized by the death of Desdemona. Chapter 4 discusses historical humanity back to context of Venice and draws the conclusion that the sustained struggles between metabolic changes and social relations push forward the development of history.This thesis draws the conclusions that the only way to reach the knowledge of reality in literature is to take all the fragments of facts both in humanism and historicity as totality of historical humanity in the historical process from past to present and from present to future. Othello demonstrates the conflicts between humanity and historicity and the struggles between the metabolic changes and the social relations in the Elizabethan Age through the characterization of the typical characters in the typical environment of Venice and Cyprus. Shakespeare’s Othello deconstructs the universality in humanity and shows us only literature has the tension to reveal historical humanity as the reality of life.