For Wednesday: Johnson, THe History of Rasselas, Chs. 17-35 (pp.44-77)

No questions this time (shew!), but we will have an in-class writing response when you get to class. Here are some ideas we might explore tomorrow, reaching back into Monday's chapters, as well as the chapters listed above:

* What does Johnson believe is the true business of a poet? What should he/she try to capture or depict for his/her readers? (how might this relate to what Johnson is trying to do for his readers?)

* Why are both Rasselas and Imlac skeptical of teachers and philosophers? How do they "fail" their profession or calling?

* In exploring the various ranks of society, what do Rasselas and his sister, Nekayah, find is universal no matter what your station in life? Do riches make the rich happier? Does family and intimacy make the poor more content? 

* What does it mean to live "according to nature"? Does this echo the poet, Alexander Pope's belief that, "whatever is, is right"? 

* Why might Johnson discuss the subject of marriage at such length in Chapters 28 and 29? Consider his audience...

* Johnson writes that "the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art" (28). How does this relate to an appreciation and study of the past? Is the past essentially better than the present?  

For Monday: Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Chs.1-16 (pp.7-44)

[Sorry for the late post--I got sick and forgot to post on time! :( ] 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What does Rasselas mean when he continually invokes the phrase, “my choice of life”? Why is he unable to make such a choice in the Happy Valley, and why does he believe that those outside the valley can are able to choose freely? Does Imlac encourage this belief?

Q2: In Chapter 10, “A Dissertation on Poetry,” Imlac philosophizes on the role of a writer/poet in society. This is important, since Johnson is writing a novel, a form of literature still suspect and largely geared toward middle-class women and servants (as we discussed in class). According to Johnson, what makes a “good” writer and what should he try to communicate to the reader? Why might the novel be the ideal vehicle to realize Imlac’s intentions?

Q3: Why does Imlac tell the prince that “Human life is every where a state which is much to be endured, and little to be enjoyed” (32)? What evidence does he offer for this, and are we supposed to believe him? If this novel is meant to be instructional, is Imlac our teacher? Or just another “choice of life?”

Q4: Rasselas is something of an everyman, in that he represents the composite human being on his or her journey toward adult understanding. However, he is also colossally naive and knows nothing about the outside world. If he does represent us, however, what is our biggest flaw when we attempt to find contentment and purpose in life? What does he consistently fail to see or understand? 

For Wednesday: Twelfth Night, Act Five and “A Modern Perspective” by Catherine Belsey (pp.197-207)

NOTE: No class on Monday, since I’ll be out of town getting a root canal(!). Also, if you don’t have the Folger edition of Twelfth Night, I’ll leave a few copies of Belsey’s essay in my door. Come get it on Monday if you need it.

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Belsey reminds us that Viola is named (as Viola) only once in the play, and then in Act 5. She goes on to mention that she “has no fixed location in the play. Even when she speaks “in her own person”—and it is not easy to be sure when that is—the play does not always make clear where we are to “find” her identity “ (203). Why do you think Shakespeare makes Viola so transparent in the play and so difficult to pin down? How does that affect the idea of both Olivia and Orsino falling in love with her?

Q2: How does Malvolio change in Act Five? While he’s still very much the same character, what about his language and his words undergoes an interesting transition? How do we—and Olivia—read him differently in the final act? (or, how does Shakespeare suggest we do?)

Q3: What do you think Belsey means when she writes that “The spectators of Twelfth Night are at one moment detached observers of love’s extravagance and its self-indulgence, while at another they are invited to participate in its pains and pleasures, sharing the point of view of the fictional lovers themselves” (206)? Why does Shakespeare offer this double perspective for the audience, and can you think of a moment where it shifts for you, as a reader?

Q4: Interestingly, in a play about love, none of the men seem remotely in love with the women in question: Sebastian has no reason to love Olivia (he doesn’t even know her!), and Orsino never quite convinces us that he loves Olivia, either. The men are much more convincing when espousing their love for other men: Orsino for Cesario, and Antonio for Sebastian. Why do you think this is? Why can men speak of love more convincingly among each other than to the opposite sex?

Short Paper #2: Dramatis Personae

Words are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them (Fool, Act 3.1)

INTRO: For your second short paper, I want you to perform the role as a resident scholar, or dramaturg, for an upcoming ECU production of Twelfth Night. In this case, imagine the actors are totally clueless about how to interpret some of their lines, so you are asked to work closely with one of the leads—your choice—to help him or her understand the character in question through a close reading of some important lines. The characters you should consider are Viola, Orsino, Olivia, Malvolio, Fool, Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew. Imagine that the actor doesn’t really know who this character is or how the lines help “clothe” them in personality and ideas. As an English major, you have a unique insight into language that can help them ‘see’ the character through the labyrinth of Shakespeare’s speech.

PROMPT: So for this paper, write a “Welcome to the Character” letter to the actor helping him or her understand who this character is through their language. Choose 2-3 passages, either entire speeches or short exchanges, to examine and analyze for the actor. Help them understand (a) what a few actual lines mean through translation, and (b) why these lines are significant to the character and to the play at large. Assume they have read the play but have only a very vague understanding of it. So in your paper, help them understand the context of the scene and why the character says and does what he/she does in this moment. But focus mostly on the language rather than the plot: don’t tell us what happens blow by blow, but use the language to reveal who the character is based on what he/she says—and how he/she says it.

EXAMPLE: In Act 3, Scene 1, the Fool gives Viola a typically witty answer to her simple question, “Dost thou live by the tabor”?, meaning, “do you make a living as a musician?” Instead of simply saying” no,” he snaps back, “No, sir, I live by the church,” which is satirical, since it suggests that he gets his living from the church, though it could also mean I live near it. When Viola protests that this is a terrible imprecise way to speak, he responds, “To see this age! A sentence is but a chev’ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward” (91). Since a “chev’ril glove” is a glove which stretches to accommodate many hands, so, too, a sentence can accommodate many meanings, and it’s the Fool’s job to twist and turn a word into every possible use—all the better to frustrate and tease his audience. This is also Shakespeare’s way of commenting on his art, since he lives in “this age!” which allows him to display language in every possible light for a paying audience. Thus, the Fool is often Shakespeare’s mouthpiece, commenting on the act of writing a play and of writing itself.

REQUIREMENTS

• 2-3 pages, double spaced
• Close reading from at least 2 separate scenes, with quotes and discussion
• Addressed to one audience—the actor of the part—and not to the professor or the class
• Due Friday, October 27th by 5pm

For Wednesday: Twelfth Night, Act Four

Since Act Four is such a tiny slip of an act, I'll only give you one question to respond to...

Q1: At the end of Scene 1, Olivia, mistaking Sebastian for Cesario, tells him, "O, say so, and so be!" Why might this be the motto of the entire Act (if not the play)? How do characters change identities and fortunes merely by the act of speech? Discuss how someone in this act uses language to change themselves or are changed by someone else's language. Why does this work in the world of Shakespeare's play, and is this true outside of the play? Are we really constructions of our and other's language?

For Friday: Twelfth Night, Act Two

Answer TWO of the following...

Q1: Close read some part of Viola’s speech in Act 2, Scene 2, which begins “Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!” This is a soliloquy, which means she is speaking to the audience alone; what does she reveal of her innermost thoughts? Is she proud to have conquered Olivia’s affections as a “man”? Does she blame Olivia for her conquest? Or Orsino?

Q2: Why do the comic characters—Sir Toby, Maria, Sir Andrew—dislike Malvolio so much? What grievances do they have against him which require Maria’s cruel vengeance? And related to this, what real-life characters or types might Shakespeare be satirizing for his audience with Malvolio’s character? (why is he a character we love to hate—or mock?)

Q3: In Scene 4, Orsino and Viola have a debate on who loves deeper: a man or woman. This is the kind of argument The Wife of Bath would have relished. Does Shakespeare seem to have read Chaucer in this scene? Is he responding to ideas he might have encountered in The Canterbury Tales? Where do we hear an echo of that famous work? And does Viola/Shakespeare seem to agree with the Wife?

Q4: Scene 5 is one of the funniest scenes in all of Shakespeare, and barely contains a drop of verse from beginning to end. What makes this such a universal scene, and one that stages particularly well for a modern audience? (also, how does Shakespeare take pains to make the language relatively easy to follow)? 

For Wednesday: Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act One

If you missed class on Monday or want to watch more of the 1969 production I showed in class, click on the link above (note that it’s somewhat out of order, and they omit some speeches).

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Scene 3, between Sir Toby, Maria, and Sir Andrew, is completely in prose, as opposed to the iambic pentameter of the previous Scene. Why do you think this is? How does it change the sound of the dialogue, and how do you think it affects the authors who interpret it? You might recall how the actors performed this in the 1969 production. Did you notice a change in Scene 3 from the rest? Should you?

Q2: Orsino’s opening speech in Act 1, Scene 1 is a love poem very similar to the ones we read in our Elizabethan Poetry anthology. Close read these lines and discuss how this is itself an anti-sonnet sonnet: what is his complaint about love, and what is he hoping his love sonnets/music will do for him? Again, read it like a poem and look for the metaphors and imagery.

Q3: Read the dialogue between Viola and Olivia Act 1, Scene 5 carefully: though the exchange begins in prose, it suddenly switches into imabic pentameter verse at line 238 with the line, “ ‘Tis beauty truly blent, whose read and white/Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.” Why do you think Viola switches into verse here, even though Olivia remains speaking prose...at least until line 256, when she switches, too. Why would Shakespeare switch the language: how are we supposed to ‘hear’ and read it differently?

Q4: The Shakespearean actor Alan Howard claimed that Elizabethans used language “like food, and they probably used words much more sensually, almost eating words.” How do we see this sense of eating and drinking language in Act One? Which characters most delight in words, not only what words mean, but how they can be twisted into different forms—particularly in puns and innuendos. Why might this be especially important in comedy?

For Wednesday: Shakespeare's Sonnets, Part II

Since we only got to read a few Sonnets, and I want to provide a good introduction to Shakespeare before we read Twelfth Night, I want to spend one more day on the Sonnets. So re-read the ones in our book, and expect an in-class writing during Wednesday's class. And since you were enterprising enough to look on the blog, guess what sonnet it's going to be over?

...Sonnet 138! 

What's interesting about Sonnet 138 is that it exists in two different versions (as students who took my Critical Responses to Poetry class might remember). Here's the other version, which you're welcome to read and compare them before Wednesday's class, where we'll talk about this at length.

Sonnet 138a

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unskillfull in the world's false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not that I am old?
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
    Therefore I'll lie with love, and love with me,
    Since that our faults in love thus smothered be.

Fun, eh? More on Wednesday...