Othello the “Moor” and Rãzvan the “Gypsy” or Human Condition as Hybris
Othello the “Moor” and Rãzvan the “Gypsy” or Human Condition as Hybris

Summary/Abstract: This article offers a comparative reading of William Shakespeare’s Othello and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu’s Răzvan and Vidra, focusing on the tragic trajectories of two marginalized figures whose exceptional merit propels them into positions of centrality within exclusionary social systems. While critical interpretations have often emphasized racism, xenophobia, or individual psychological flaws as primary causes of their downfall, this study advances a different thesis: the tragedies of Othello and Răzvan are best understood through the concept of hybris as an ontological condition, rather than as a moral or ethical excess alone. Drawing on the Platonic notion of thymos as the human drive for recognition, the article argues that both protagonists suffer from a form of conditional recognition that destabilizes their identity. Hybris, as dramatized in these works, reveals a fundamental tension inherent in the human condition itself.

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