For Monday: Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, pp.115-165 (approx) & Paper #2

For Monday, read the next 50 or so pages of A Journal of the Plague Year, and focus specifically on the stories of people fleeing London; we'll do an in-class writing response when you get to class. Also, the Paper #2 assignment is below, so start thinking about that as well!  

Paper #2: The Masks of Society

CONTEXT: The Eighteenth Century was obsessed with all sorts of literal and metaphorical masks, especially those that could be worn by an artist. An author can adopt various narrative disguises so that we least expect his or her motives in telling us a story; in the same way, a playwright can present a fanciful cast of characters that, upon closer inspection, bear an uncanny resemblance to the audience. Art itself is a game of masking and unmasking, and both of our eighteenth-century writers, Sheridan and Defoe, are trying to divert our attention so we can see the one thing we can never see clearly: our own faces.

RESPONSE: For this paper, I want you to discuss how each author uses their literary masks—the stage and the novel—to help society ‘see’ itself. While one is a sober account of the 1665 plague and the other is a satirical comedy, both offer a broad critique of London society. What does each work want us to see about their beliefs, values, behavior, fashion, biases, and compassion? Is each work trying to reform society? And if so, how? Is one more successful than the other? Is comedy more advantageous—or less serious? Is the novel a better ‘mirror’ than the stage? Or too clumsy? Is each work offering the same critique from different perspectives...or does each one come to different conclusions? What, if anything, makes both works unique to their time and place?  Consider how upper-class salons and the plague-ridden streets of London can be used as a ‘frame’ to explore how society thinks, acts, and  functions in public and private settings.

REQUIREMENTS: For this assignment you don’t need secondary sources (unless you want to use them), but I do expect you to use both works and to demonstrate close reading and analysis of each work. Make sure you help your readers ‘see’ your ideas by connecting them to the text, and don’t assume what the text says is obvious: discuss the language of the passage so we understand how it relates to their world—and possibly, our own. 

                                                       

The paper should be 4-5 pages double spaced, with all quotes cited according to MLA format, along with a Works Cited page.

DUE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16^th BY 5pm (No Class that day)