Desiring Othello: Race, Pity, and Petrarchism

Britton’s talk explores Desdemona’s pity and love for Othello, and how and why Othello becomes desirable, arguing that Desdemona’s pity does not foreclose the import of Othello’s blackness on her feelings; in fact, her pity should be read as an expression of an English Petrarchanism that variously racialized male suffering and female pity. Othello suggests that the suffering black subject is a pitiful one; the pitiful black subject is a lovable, desirable one.