The writer was born just towards the end of the era now known as the Renaissance, in 1564. A time of awakening, of extreme changes in moral, social and cultural values all over Europe, the Renaissance led to an alteration and overall amelioration in the continent’s literature that would mark the field’s high-ground for centuries to …show more content…
His attempt at deception to further incriminate Othello makes use of racialization to convince Brabantio. He makes an explicit distinction between the “old black ram” Othello, and Brabantio’s “white ewe”, his daughter, Desdemona. The contrast between the two skin colours augments the absurdness of the events, and it aims to elicit colossal madness in Brabantio, who could have never accepted his daughter being bewitched, let alone by a “black ram”, an animal, a beast.
His situation could be compared to that of a Joao de Sa Panasco. Panasco was a black jester for Catherine of Austria’s court, and he was considered by the queen as one of the most entertaining men to ever be present at her court. He was even appointed gentleman of the queen’s household, and was part of successful military campaigns for the royal family. Nevertheless, Panasco was, as T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe describe in ‘Black Africans in Renaissance Europe’, “despite these honors, [...] stigmatized by his color and discriminated against by his white peers”. (p.