SHAKESPEARE, TRAGEDIES & ROMANCES

PROFESSOR: CARLA MAZZIO

MIDTERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

DUE DATE: DUE IN SECTIONS, FRIDAY, APRIL 21st

PLEASE SUBMIT TWO COPIES

For your midterm paper, compose a 5 page paper, typed, double-spaced, entitled, and carefully edited. Construct an argument about one play based on close textual analysis at every step . The assignment is for you to write with real engagement and analytical depth about just one issue in one of the following plays: Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear.

Important: You are free to select your own topic, but all students should email section leaders a 1-2 sentence topic description by the Tuesday before the due date, no later than 7 PM.

You'll want your topic to be focused enough for you to really dig in and make the argument your own (topics so large as “evil” or “fate” or indeed “tragedy” are simply too broad and tend to discourage close and careful reading) and complex enough to enable your argument to develop throughout the paper.

A focus may be enabled by drawing from your own observation of intriguing and recurrent issues, images, words, forms of language-use in the play. In order to ground your insights on close analysis of the text, you might consider a) focusing on the significance of a particular linguistic form (the simile, for example, something we touched on in relation to Titus Andronicus , or synecdoche, hyperbole, oxymoron or puns) in relationship to a major conceptual issue at stake in one play b) focusing on a particular issue (eating in Titus , magic in Othello , hearing in Hamlet , insults in King Lear ) while mapping out the significance of that issue from the very first c) focusing on the significance of a minor character (the clown in Titus or Othello ), of recurrent imagery, or the final words in a play.

Possible topics. The suggestions above, these are of course topics-- not theses-- for you to shape into specific arguments if you like. Your paper title will encode your focus and argument, turning for example, from insults to “Insults, Injury and Language Abuse in King Lear ” or “Poisonous Words: Advice and Toxic Audition in Hamlet ,” “The Revenger's Diet: Food, Texts and Children in Titus Andronicus.” (More on titles, the first words of your composition, below in “tips” section).

In addition to the possible topics above, here are four broad issues you may want to explore.

MILITARISM

1) All four of these plays include military matters as an element in a tragic plot. Consider how one of the play integrates military action in ways that complicate other aspects of action in one tragedy.

REVENGE

2) Many of the plays foreground relationships between theatrical performance and “revenge.” You may want to use Bacon's “of revenge' (essay on course website under “topics and texts” for Titus ), to launch an essay on one particular aspect of revenge in Titus Androniucs, Hamlet, Othello or even King Lear. As you think on this topic, you might consider what issues of memory, or issues of proof, or concepts of cause and effect, are integral to the structure of revenge.

PARENTS AND CHILDREN

All of these tragedies examine the “drama” integral to the shift of power from one generation to another. Take one model of a parent/child relationship in one play to begin to explore the specific problems of generational transfer that inform one tragedy. How might issues of “time” in the play you explore be linked with the issue of parent/child relationships? (For those interested in Titus, you might further explore the myth of Saturn, god of Time, eating or devouring his own generations in order to maintain his power). Or, alternatively, how does gender and reproduction complicate issues of generational transfer in one of these tragedies?

BODIES

4. In your own terms, explore the significance of one specific aspect of sensory perception (touch, smell, sound, sight, taste) in one play, or the significance of a specific form of bodily imagery (tears, kisses, hands, tongues, eyes, hearts, etc.)

SIX TIPS ON PAPER WRITING

1) QUOTING SHAKESPEARE

To quote a line from Shakespeare, follow your quotation with the following notation for act, scene, and line numbers: (I.ii.45-6) or (1.2.45-6). Use either form of numeration, just be consistent. To signify line breaks in a passage that you cite within the body of your text, put the following mark (/) between lines as below:

Titus, linking the capacity to "passionate" one's grief with the
expressive gestures of the hand, is not just disempowered as a
politician, but as an actor, orator, and communicator as well:
"Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands / And cannot
passionate our tenfold grief / With folded arms" (II.ii.6-8).

If the passage that you cite is over three lines, you will want to simply separate the quote from the main body of your text (in this case, no quotation marks are needed):

Titus, linking the capacity to "passionate" one's grief with the
expressive gestures of the hand, is not just disempowered as a
politician, but as an actor, orator, and communicator as well:
Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands
And cannot passionate our tenfold grief
With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine
Is left to tyrranize upon my breast,
Who, when my heart, all mad with misery,
Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,
Then thus I thump it down. (II.ii.6-10)

DO NOT TO START SENTENCES, "In Act One, Scene, two, line..." (people don't remember plays according to line numbers), but rather always foreground the contexts of the lines you analyze (for example, "At the very moment Titus is confronted with the severed heads of his two sons...").

2) ANALYZE: Analyze, don't describe. If you find yourself writing in descriptive prose for more than two sentences, sit back and ask yourself why those sentences matter, then build the response into the sentence itself. Also, avoid generalizations that you can't back up. If you want to allude to a historical issue about "the Renaissance," get a source and cite it. Otherwise, resist such sweeping statements. Starting your essay with a strong focus will keep you from overgeneralizing.

3) TRANSITIONS: Try to work to foreground the logic of your transitions from paragraph to paragraph. In each paragraph (usually at the beginning) signal your conceptual transition from idea to idea, this will sharpen your argument and enable your reader to follow the progression of your thinking.

4) PAPER TITLES: Titles should be "snappy" to the extent that they encode the central concern of your essay. They are the first words of your composition, so use them to set the tone and announce the subject. Jumping off from the very end of our discussion on Titus Andronicus , consider the difference between “Revenge in Titus Andronicus” and something like "Animating Corpses: Aaron, Revenge and the Classical Past in Titus Andronicus." The latter title would compel readers to continue reading to see how these ideas are related and developed in your argument. You can see how composing a title is itself an analytic exercise, pushing you to think about what's really at stake in your paper.

5) SITUATING WORDS: USING THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Drawing on the earlier paper assignment “what's in a word,” try integrating one historical or etymological consideration of a word in the course of your paper. As I explained on our course website, The Oxford English Dictionary offers nuanced and historically specific definitions of words--and as such, can be an invaluable tool for any analysis of words in Shakespeare. The words we read in early modern texts can often seem deceptively familiar and the OED can help to inform or complicate a close textual analysis.
See “What's in a Word” on our course website on how to cite the OED.

6) ENJOY . The most important part of writing is engaging with a play in a way that gives you real pleasure in thinking, analyzing, and working out your own argument on a play. When you find yourself enjoying the process...you are on the right track!

Okay--cheers for now, enjoy Othello, King Lear, and thinking on your paper topics.