“One who loved not wisely but too well” | Arturo Cattaneo скачать в хорошем качестве

“One who loved not wisely but too well” | Arturo Cattaneo

Uxoricide as a word did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. Husbands killing their wives, however, were far from rare in Tudor England, when Shakespeare wrote Othello, the most famous story ever about a man murdering his wife because he thinks she is unfaithful. That she is not, clearly does not make Othello the more guilty: a misconceived sense of honour or of love can never be a pretext for killing someone. Othello as a play goes to the heart of domestic tragedies, exposing men’s cruelty and lack of respect for and understanding of women. While it would be anachronistic to enlist Shakespeare in the modern legal and social battles to stop violence against women, in Othello he clearly shows us two examples of complementary and equally wrong violent husbands – Othello and Iago – as well two complementary and equally wronged wives – Desdemona and Emilia, Iago’s wife. Othello styling himself, at the end of the play, as “one who loved not wisely but too well”, sounds terribly misleading in the light of what he and Iago have brought about. Relatore Arturo Cattaneo è Professore Ordinario di Letteratura Inglese presso l'Università Cattolica di Milano. Ha pubblicato libri e saggi in italiano e in inglese. Tra i libri, un lungo saggio creativo, Shakespeare e l'amore (Einaudi, Torino 2019). È autore di A Short History of English Literature (Mondadori, Milano 2019), e di una serie di storie antologiche della letteratura inglese per le scuole superiori (Literary Journeys - Connecting ideas l’ultima, edita da Signorelli, Milano). Ha pubblicato due romanzi: Ci vediamo a settembre (2010, Sedizioni) e La notte inglese (2012, Mondadori).