Open Access"Fluster’d with flowing cups": Alcoholism, Humoralism, and the Prosthetic Narrative in Othello
Author(s) -
David Houston Wood
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
disability studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2159-8371
pISSN - 1041-5718
DOI - 10.18061/dsq.v29i4.998
Subject(s) - narrative , context (archaeology) , literature , representation (politics) , psychoanalysis , hamlet (protein complex) , abnormality , aesthetics , psychology , history , philosophy , art , politics , social psychology , law , political science , archaeology
Normal 0false false falseEN-US X-NONE X-NONEMicrosoftInternetExplorer4/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}This essay examines William Shakespeare’s Othello as an example of early modern narrative prosthesis. Rather than look to visual markers of difference and abnormality upon which claims of narrative prosthesis frequently rely, the essay examines the way Othello presents such difference and abnormality as an inward aspect of the psychosomatic construction of the humoral self. Drawing upon classical, medieval, and early modern views that correlate a medical relationship between wine and the black bile of humoral melancholy, the essay engages Shakespeare’s numerous representations of drunkenness, especially Hamlet’s formulation (in the context of his uncle, Claudius) of the disease-model of drunkenness we today term alcoholism. The essay then turns to Othello to explore how Shakespeare’s representation of Michael Cassio’s alcoholic “infirmity” serves as both a characterological and narrative prosthetic model for Othello’s propensity to jealous rage that Iago both manipulates and confounds. Keywords : Shakespeare, Othello , disability, Michael Cassio, adustion, alcoholism, drunkenness, melancholy