ESSAY TOPICS
Select ONE of the following essay questions and write an essay in MLA format. Remember that your essay must incorporate a theoretical course reading (Freud, Frye or Gruner) and one secondary reading of your choice.
1. Aristotle’s argues that comedy is an imitation of low characters with some defect or ugliness. This seems to be a fitting description of Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bottom is after all translated into an ass. However, in Act 1, Scene 2, Quince appears to ennobles Bottom’s character:
You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus
is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see
in a summer’s day; a most lovely, gentleman-like
man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus. (1.2.79-82)
This essay question requires that you make a solid argument either in support of, or in refutation of Aristotle’s position about low characters. Support your argument by analyzing and evaluating TWO (2) comedic texts from our course reading list. Demonstrate some knowledge of the social, cultural, political, and/or historical conditions under which your chosen texts were produced.
2. George Meredith published “On the Idea of Comedy and of the Uses of the Comic Spirit” in 1877. Although, Meredith’s representation of the East (or Orient) is deeply problematic, his position on women, equality, and the comic spirit deserves our attention. Not only does he recognize that some comic poets have mired the idea of women, but he also believes that comedy is a force of democratization for women:
…there never will be civilization where Comedy is not possible; and that comes of some degree of social equality of the sexes. I am…quoting…for cultivated women to recognize that the Comic Muse is one of their best friends…They will see that where they have no social freedom, Comedy is absent…But where women are on the road to an equal footing with men, in attainments and in liberty—in what they have won for themselves, and what has been granted them by a fair civilization—there, and only waiting to be transplanted from life to the stage, or the novel, or the poem, pure Comedy flourishes…
This essay question requires that you make a solid argument either in support of, or in refutation of Meredith’s ideas about women and comedy by analyzing and evaluating TWO (2) comedic texts on our course reading list. Your answer should demonstrate some knowledge of the social, cultural, political, and/or historical conditions under which your chosen texts were produced.
3. Our course has focused on the interrelation between comedic texts. The individual text does not stand in isolation but develops out of and/or in resistance to antecedent comedic texts and comedic theory. This essay topic offers you the opportunity to analyze the interrelation between a text on our course syllabus and its filmic or theatrical adaptation.
Sarah Casey Benyahia and Claire Mortimer’s argument should guide your comparison between the literary text and the filmic/theatrical adaptation:
…analysis of film language is the basis of informed interrogation of the film text…within an individual scene there will be significant shifts in lighting, costume or camerawork which contribute to the creation of meaning…Performance cannot be studied in isolation, as it is clearly created by the interplay of camerawork, editing, lighting, sound, costume and other aspects of mise en scene
Select a key scene in the literary text and the corresponding scene in the filmic theatrical adaptation and discuss the relationship between them. Pay attention to the language in both the literary text and the adaptation. Whereas, the literary text might, for example, use puns, repartee, and double entendres, the filmic text, as Benyahia and Mortimer explain above, has its own language. How does the scene in the literary source text and the adaptation contribute to your understanding of the challenges, ambitions, and politics of comedy
