ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on the pattern seen in Troilus and Criseyde, by focusing on the failures of two men (and the successes of two women) in achieving what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls a retournement dans l’Autre, a turning toward the Other. In Marlowe’s Dido, Queene of Carthage and Shakespeare’s Othello, the pattern established in Troilus and Criseyde becomes even more pronounced: in each play, the husbands and lovers are portrayed as tragically unwilling and/or unable to reach past their concern for themselves (Aeneas for obedience to the gods, and Othello for reputation among his soldiers and peers in the Venetian state) to see the truth. Each looks into the eyes of a woman who literally would and does die for him, and sees nothing but himself.
