Attitude Toward Turks in Othello

In William Shakespeare's Othello, the military general Othello is involved in the campaign against the Turks, leading the Venetian forces against the enemy. He is a Moor, and he is viewed as an outsider in spite of his role. Both the Moors and the Turks were viewed at a distance in Elizabethan times and represented the alien, otherness, the exotic, and held an inferior position in the view of Elizabethan England. Shakespeare makes use of attitudes toward both Moors and Turks in shaping the story of Othello.

Papp and Kirkland note the antipathy many in England felt toward foreigners (and, indeed, the British are still considered to be xenophobic in some degree), and the authors offer a reason for this:

For England, unlike the american nation it eventually spawned, took no pride in becoming a melting pot for many cultures. Even though Elizabethans were living in an age when explorers, scholars, merchants, and writers were flinging open the doors to other cultures, most people preferred to hang back, tarrying on the well-trodden thresholds of ignorance and fear (Papp and Kirkland 49).

In addition, there was always a certain sense of superiority that colored how the British viewed others:

Hand in hand with the Elizabethan people's provincial outlook went the certainty that they were better than everyone else. Once the English had more or less settle the religious question, built up a powerful navy, and reestablished themselves as a power to be reckoned with in international

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Category: Literature - A