Brief clip detailing how women were affected by the revolution and also took part on the front lines. https://www.pbs.org/video/the-storm-that-swept-mexico-revolutionary-women/
Discussion board (due 10/28)
Throughout the semester we keep circling back to the claim Eagleton makes about literature: literature is fundamentally about morals, or a way of life. The job of the critic is to identify the “way of life” for which a piece of literature argues. As we’ve been reading Like Water for Chocolate (LWFC), a question that…
Discussion Board (due 10/16)
Remember there is ALSO a discussion board post due on 10/14, so if you haven’t done that yet, you should. Jane the Virgin is a television show that ran from 2014 and ended this year. It is an American adaptation of a Venezuelan telenovela, a type of television show that developed from sources similar to…
Discussion Board (due 10/14)
I’ve posted a number of quotations from the first two chapters in the LWFC discussion board. Choose one of them and, as a reply to the quotation, write about it thoughtfully*. Analyze the quotation by looking for the meaning behind the images; tease out the differences and their meanings in comparisons; find out what new…
Reflections on Essay I
Analysis & Criticism Terry Eagleton argued in “How to Read Poetry,” that all literature is concerned with morality, or how to live your life. If you’re writing an essay about how competition is a major theme in MND, you are arguing that the play makes an argument about competition functions in our lives. Perhaps it’s…
Some thoughts on MND
Plays are not meant to be read. They’re not meant for the audience at all. They are for the actors to use and dispose of before the play begins. Shakespeare couldn’t possibly have imagined that people would read his plays, especially in school. So, what exactly is “the play”? The text used by the actors,…
Essay I (draft due 10/2)
“. . . I never may believethese antique fables, nor these fairy toys. The lunatic, the lover, and the poetare of imagination all compact.” — THESEUS, (MND 5.1.15-18) Write a professional essay in which you identify an important theme in MND (explaining why) and discuss how the the play explores that theme by comparing two scenes. Consider imagery,…
Shakespeare’s Insults
In 2016, the U.K. celebrated Shakespeare’s 400th birthday. While Shakespeare was a popularly and royally recognized in his day, most lawmakers viewed the theater as low and immoral, which is why they forced theaters to be across the river, next to brothels and bear baiters. “Can you imagine,” those pious lawmakers might have said, “what…
Discussion Board (due 9/16)
It’s hard to appreciate how much meter affects writing without trying it yourself. So for this week’s response, roll up your sleeves and write some poetry! Directions Write lease write a ten line stanza in one of the three meters listed below (all of which appear in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Indicate the stressed syllables in your poem by placing…
Discussion Board (due 9/9)
For this first discussion board assignment, choose a character introduced in Act I and briefly compare your first impression of the character from your reading to the two interpretations in the filmed productions. What lines in the text might be the basis for each interpretation? Please post as either a thread (with the character’s name…
