SOURCE: Yachnin, Paul. “Magical Properties: Vision, Possession, and Wonder in Othello.” Theatre Journal 48, no. 2 (1996): 197-208.

In the following essay, Yachnin interprets Othello as a theatrical evocation of the violent potentiality of wonder, embodied in Desdemona's fetishized handkerchief.

A specter is haunting new historicism—the specter of the aesthetic: the attributes of beauty and sublimity, the realm of wonderful objects and feelings of awe. From Louis Montrose's evocation of the uncanny connections between Simon Forman's dream of Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Stephen Greenblatt's book, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, we can discern an investment in wonder among those whom we might have expected to be more attuned to the political dimensions of literature.¹ Of course, materialist criticism is entitled to examine the forms of wonder, since wonder is as much involved in the socio-political realm as is gender, rank, or...