Essays For all your essays, be sure to focus your reading, preferably on a single character, scene, or even passage in the work(s), and to support your point with a close reading of the text. Do not generalize. Make sure your essay has a thesis, a point against which someone might argue, using the evidence of the text.
If you wish to write about a film for one of your essays, you are welcome to do so but must cover the requisite number of written texts, as suggested below.
Essay #1
Classical Comedy (Aristophanes, Plautus, Shakespeare as Interpreter of the Classical World)
Due on Lecture 5 (5 pages - 10%)
In the comedies you've read so far, errors drive the plot, or characters appear to be in error. Here are some questions to give you ways to think about error. Use them as a starting point for an analysis of the use of error in one play.
Which senses or faculties seem most affected by error? What does the play seem to be saying about the way the mind (or the body) works? How does error affect the character's use of language?
Who is responsible for the errors in the play? Are figures of authority in error? What is the relationship between authority and error in the play?
Do the characters seem happy or reluctant to give up their errors? What does the conclusion of the play, the restoration of sense, say about the play's values?
How does error relate to fantasy, dream, superstition, or other aberrations of the mind?
Essay #2
Renaissance Comedy (Shakespeare and Cervantes)
Due on Lecture 12 (7 pages - 20%)
Much classical comedy depends on physical action and props, on the use of masks, or performance elements like song, chorus, and dance, and slapstick. What physical elements do you find carrying over from the Greek and Roman plays to Shakespeare's England or Cervantes' Spain? Do the "performances" in the comic play or novel, its visual, choreographic, or other special effects, work to heighten or undermine its plot and meaning?
Choose a couple from The Taming of the Shrew or Don Quixote to discuss. How does each member of the couple define his or her limits in the relationship? Do they violate these limits? How do they reconcile differences? Do they respect each other's rights and boundaries? What do this couple's interactions show about the author's attitudes to love and sex?
Each work includes reasonable characters who contrast with the central figure, whom many consider deviant or mad. How does Shakespeare or Cervantes represent the figure of moderation? Is he or she a hero or not?
Examine one ending closely or compare two to determine how comic endings resolve conflict and to what degree they restore order: social order, personal authority, justice, or the truth. Or discuss how marriage works to create or challenge closure.
Essay #3
Satire and Wit (Molière, Behn, Twain, and Wilde)
Due on Lecture 22 (8 pages - 20%)
For this essay you have the option of a close reading of one work or a comparison between two of these authors or between one of these and an earlier author about whom you have not written before.
Defend a character or characters whom you think the author has neglected or represented unfairly: Alceste, Arsinoé, Willmore, Blunt, Pudd'nhead Wilson or Tom Driscoll, Lady Bracknell. Many of these characters are seen at various times as obstacles, villains, or fools. What does a closer reading reveal?
Tricksters: many characters in these works try to fool or deceive others. Examine how one of these authors uses the trickster to develop conflicts, challenge social order, or create comedy.
Witty ladies: what possibilities or limits does wit create for women in these works? What is wit and how does it work to empower women or put them at risk? You may draw on our discussions of witty ladies in earlier works if you like.
In a number of the works you've read, love grows out of obstacles between the lovers-misunderstandings, quarrels and dislikes, jokes and insults-as much as from external obstacles-the blocking figures and villains of classical and Shakespearean comedy. Sometimes, we even see characters struggling with themselves, with their own internal difficulties or resistances to marriage. Yet most marry happily in the end. How does one or more of these works resolve the conflicts between lovers to produce the comic ending? What does it say about the value of love and marriage? Does the marriage ending achieve festive closure, and if so, how?
We saw in Don Quixote that idleness was associated with ease, license, and, to the extent that idleness allows for the free play of wit, creativity. In later works we find many characters who seem to be idle: are they? Do their actions seem serious and purposeful or merely designed to pass the time? What is the use of such idle activities as gossip, hobbies, sexual play, eating, dancing, walking, writing, or exchanging witty nonsense? Is reading idle? What comic or creative possibilities does idleness provide? Does it liberate people?
These works contain characters with strong appetites and desires, to which they abandon themselves with more or less freedom. How are these appetites viewed in the world of the fiction, and how are they restrained? What does the outcome of a character's transgressive desire say about the social order of the work in question?
Several of these works comment on tragedy or come close to becoming tragic. What is the relationship between comedy and tragedy in one or more of these works? How does it complicate the work in question? A related issue is that of satire. How does satire change the typical patterns and energies of comedy?
General Notes on Writing
Assume that you are writing for an audience of readers like yourself: that is, those who have read the work(s) in question, share your knowledge (and sense of humor), and want to know how you view the material. Use, then, an accessible, natural language, one that is neither too elevated (avoid jargon and academic formality, use the first person if appropriate, introduce relevant current or personal material) nor too common (avoid slang; be clear and direct).
Avoid plot summary, character summary, or any descriptive or narrative approach to your subject. You are arguing your point and should select a controversial thesis (test: would anyone argue against your proposition?), a thesis which you develop by looking closely at evidence from the text. You are also offering your own reading of the material, which you must explain by showing how you derived it from passages in the text.
Quotations judiciously chosen will support and amplify your point, but they require interpretation. Try not to give the reader large wads of text to read and understand. Quote what you need (remember to close your quotation with quotation marks, give the page reference in parentheses, and then give the closing punctuation), and explain its relevance to the main point you're making.
A good introduction will set up the argument by giving its main outlines. Stay away from big windy openings with generalizations like, "Humans have always felt the need to communicate through works of fiction," or "Women have historically always suffered from discrimination by men": these statements may be true, but it would take a library to show why. Start with the subject at hand, let the reader know where you're going, and provide a concise, specific thesis. A good conclusion will gather the argument up (you may not need to summarize if the point is clear) and suggest why it's important in some larger context.
Use present tense. The events you're writing about took place in the past, but the act of reading and talking about them takes place in the present.
Papers will be graded on the quality of the ideas and argument, the clarity of the writing, the effectiveness of the organization, the use of evidence from the text, and the understanding of concepts from the course.
I will suggest specific paper topics to get you thinking about the material and to integrate ideas discussed in class. You may always choose a topic or approach of your own, and I am available to discuss topics at any time.