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LIT 165 Syllabus
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WRT 120 Syllabus
WRT 120 Announcements and Assignments
A Reading of THE TEMPEST
Goals of the Course
Fundamental Questions about Literature
Valuing Literature
Critical Thinking and Reading Literature
Critical Approaches to Literature
Literature as ART
Ambiguity
Approaching the Art of Fiction
Defining the Short Story
Evaluating Short Fiction
Craft of Fiction: PLOT
Craft of Fiction: CHARACTER
Small Group Exercise
ARABY by James Joyce
WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? by Joyce Carol Oates
Our RITES OF PASSAGE Theme
A note about GIRL
POE and the art of STORY OF A HOUR
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
YOUNG MAN ON SIXTH AVENUE
Notes on Innovative Fiction
Assignment Sheet for Paper #1
Fiction and Ambiguity - Your Questions
Writing Workshop - Short Fiction
Poetry Journal Project Assignment Sheet
LITERARY SYNTHESIS PROJECT
Defining Poetry
Reading Poetry
The Craft of Poetry
Drama and Tragedy
Study Questions: DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Paper #4 Assignment Sheet
Critical Thinking and Commentary
Casebook: Evaluating Sources Worksheet
Selecting Information
Evaluating Arguments
CASEBOOK PROJECT Assignment Sheet
Approaching Persuasive Writing
Topic Development - Profile Essay
Generating Ideas for the Profile Essay
Paper #2 Assignment Sheet
Profile Exercise
Analyzing THE FIVE BEDROOM, SIX FIGURE ROOTLESS LIFE
Objective Writing: Selected Readings
Writing Workshop: Paper #1
Expressive Writing in the NYTimes
Writing Effective Introductions and Conclusions
Paper #1: IDENTITY
Expressive Writing
Open Letter Exercise and Examples
EMERSON on Individuality vs. Conformity
Literature related to IDENTITY
Understanding the 'Rhetorical Situation'
Weblog for WRT 120
Writing Assistance on the Web
Blackboard at WCU
WCU Homepage
WCU's Francis Harvey Green Library
One Last Look at Imaginary Worlds
Franz Kafka's BEFORE THE LAW
Analyzing WAITING FOR GODOT
Approaching WAITING FOR GODOT
Paper #3: Assignment Sheet
Paper #4: Independent Project
The Problem of Stability in BRAVE NEW WORLD
UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA Links
Analyzing Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD
Defining Utopia
Embarking on Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD
A Reading of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST
From today's news (11/3/05)
Assignment Sheet for Paper #2
Goodbye to Dante's Imaginary World
Stepping Through Dante's Inferno: Cantos 10-34
Stepping Through Dante's Inferno: Cantos 1-10
INFERNO: Questions/Analysis: Cantos 32-34
INFERNO: Questions/Analysis: Cantos 18-31
INFERNO: Questions for Analysis: Cantos 12-17
INFERNO: Structure
INFERNO: Questions for Analysis: Cantos 1-5
INFERNO: Analyzing Canto 1
Relating to Dante's Inferno
Approaching Dante's DIVINE COMEDY
A Little Help with Dante's INFERNO
Assignment Sheet for Paper #1
Notes on LEAF BY NIGGLE
Responses to LEAF BY NIGGLE
ON FAIRY STORIES: An Essay by Tolkien
Notes on Axolotl
Reading Ovid's Tales
From Myth to Literature: Approaching Ovid's Tales
Notes on THE EYE OF THE GIANT
Functions of the Genesis Tales
Analyzing Mythic Tales
Defining Mythology
Filtering the Introduction to FANTASTIC WORLDS
Commentary on LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI by Keats
Commentary on DARKNESS by Byron
Handout: Imagination Poems Set
What is Imagination?
Our Course Theme: Imaginary Worlds
LIT 165 Assignments: Fall 2005
LIT 165 Announcements: Fall 2005
Imaginary Worlds: Course Syllabus
Paper #4: Independent Thinking/Reading/Writing
Casebook Preparation Checklist
Casebook Assignment Schedule
Evaluating Sources for the Casebook
Casebook Project Assignment Sheet
Notes on Rational Argument
Argument
Assignment Sheet: Objective Writing
Reviewing Elements of the Profile Essay
Writing the Profile Essay
Readings: Objective Writing
Assignment Sheet: Expressive Writing
Rubric for Evaluation of Writing
About SKIN DEEP
Emerson on Individuality vs. Conformity
Mind-map: Identity
Understanding the 'Rhetorical Situation'
Assignments Page
Announcements Page
WRT 120 Course Syllabus for Fall 2005
Weblog for WRT 120
Writing Assistance on the Web
Blackboard at WCU
WCU Homepage
WCU's Francis Harvey Green Library
Greek theater was born.
From this golden age of Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and others, classical Greek theater has drizzled down through the foggy ruins of time incredibly resonant works of literature that are still alive with meaning and relevance, even today. Almost twenty-five hundred years separate us from these comedies and tragedies that are so firmly situated in ancient Greece—they are some of the western world’s oldest literature—yet, amazingly, they still speak to us. The issues these writers grappled with, their insights into the human heart, still resonate with us today. Discovering our modern selves peeking out from these ancient texts can be an exhilarating, heady experience—which goes to the heart of what literature is all about.
Ancient Greek theater was a community event, a cultural happening. The festival plays were performed for the entire citizenry in huge amphitheaters carved into hillsides. These outdoor arenas seated thousands—as many as 15,000 people. The seats faced an “orchestra” or “dancing place” behind which actors played their scenes in front of a “skene”—the building behind the stage where actors exited and changed costumes. Gradually it became customary to paint the wall facing the audience to suggest a “set”—a particular setting or place where the scenes were taking place. Our modern stage is not a whole lot different its ancient beginning.
However, there are a few conventions in ancient Greek theater that are no longer familiar. If you were to study a Greek play, they would bear explaining. Even if you are not studying ancient drama, it helps to understand these features, because they haven’t completely vanished from the modern theater, although they may have metamorphosized.
First, each play had its “chorus,” or group of men, a dozen or so, who would observe the action from the orchestra, and between episodes would sing and dance their commentary on the action. Sometimes the chorus leader would even participate in the scenes by engaging the characters in dialogue. The chorus’ role was to model a response to the action unfolding on the stage. They represented public opinion, the public’s response to the events of the play. They might provide background information (exposition), or tell us what they think of the relative virtue of the characters—good or ill. They might try to offer advice, or admonish bad behavior. Whatever their precise function, their poetic commentary following each episode must have been a crucial part of the entertainment, as they would sing and dance and chant rhythmic lines of poetry between scenes—their musical lines and poetic diction would heighten the language and the emotional intensity.
Another Greek convention was the “god in the machine” (deus ex machina in Latin). This was a device some playwrights used to resolve conflicts when they were too difficult for the characters to resolve. Literally a “god” was lowered onto the stage by a mechanical platform (imagine a window-washer’s unit), descending from the roof of the skene, rescuing the characters from themselves. It’s interesting to note that Sophocles—innovator that he indeed was—never made use of this device. He must have thought it too simplistic, too contrived. That’s the way we think of it today as well—an artificial device that provides an easy-out.
Structurally, Greek plays are somewhat different from modern drama with its one-act, three-act, or five-act structure, but we don’t have much trouble adjusting back to the prologue, episode, and exodus structure of ancient drama. Things haven’t changed as much as they might have in 2500 years.
One thing that hasn’t changed much at all is our ability to create and respond to tragedy, in life and in art.
Tragedy is all about
suffering, especially human suffering. Unfortunately it’s all
around us, every day, when we open our eyes to see it. “Count no man
happy till he dies” (Sophocles’ famous last word in Oedipus). No
one is safe; we’re all vulnerable. And we can’t always shield ourselves
from that basic but terrifying truth, as much as we may want to.
The reality of tragedy lies before us, seen or unseen. An elderly
couple dies alone and unnoticed inside the stiflingly hot attic of a
flooded house in a poor section of New Orleans. A firefighter
rushes into chaos trying to rescue someone and is killed in the
process. These events are bad enough, heart-wrenching
enough. But what about the individual who rushes to someone’s
rescue, insisting on doing it alone, unwilling to risk anyone else’s
life—or feeling overconfident, maybe—and dies because he tried to make
the rescue alone? Or the individual who waded through
contaminated flood waters to save a stranded child, and five years
later is diagnosed with cancer? A child dies of a disease, which
feels tragic enough—but what if you learn she died of a curable
disease, but her family didn’t have the resources to get her the
treatment? There are ghosts we sometimes create ourselves, suffering we bring upon ourselves. This is the suffering that tragedy reveals to us by facing it head on. No avoidance. Why? Maybe Nietzsche said it best: “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” The Greek tragedians understood that if a “hero” were to emerge, he (we would add, or she) would have to emerge amidst tragedy. Tragedy is a powerful catalyst for heroism, and equally a catalyst for revealing its opposite. The Greeks explored, in their tragedies, all the ways the human spirit could respond in the face of overwhelming suffering. How does the hero act and react? Does the hero face it head on, make an attempt to overcome it, or become crushed by it? In The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Michael Meyer says that “a literary tragedy presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death.” What’s at stake is usually more than an individual life—it’s the life of the state, the fate of the community that’s in danger.
Even in their day, some of the great tragedians of the classical era took heat for being “too depressing” (especially Euripides). But there must be some deep-seated value to this so-called depressing stuff if we keep producing it. As long as there are humans alive to observe it, tragedy won't go away, and neither, it seems, will our desire to represent it artistically, meaningfully, truthfully. Some of the most psychologically incisive literature in existence is in the form of tragedy. Whether it’s ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespearean tragedy, or modern day tragedy, the message is essentially the same: humans suffer terribly, pitifully, but there’s so much wisdom to be gained from that suffering that to ignore it or cover it under a rug (or put a falsely happy face on it, ala Hollywood) would be to blind ourselves to the great human strengths it engenders. To remove the tragedy would be to remove what is most noble about us, what is most resilient and inspiring. Tragedy doesn't depress or paralyze us—it does the opposite. It moves us, sometimes to tears. We cry, not merely from sadness or depression, but from an intensity of understanding. In that cry, in those tears, we become sharply, acutely aware of our feelings. Through this story we've been following, which seemed to be about someone else, we’ve strangely come to know ourselves. What value there is in that self-knowledge no one can say. I can only think it’s priceless. And when we cry together, we become more acutely aware of one another’s feelings as well. There’s some kind of superglue running in those tears. They unite us, attach us to one another, make us realize we care about the same things, share the same values, belong to the same community.
Some 2500 hundred years later, the best source for understanding the nature of tragedy is still Aristotle.
Aristotle taught that art should be an “imitation” of life. It should hold a mirror up to life. It should be “truthful,” or “true to life.” Tragedy is a fact of life, so any work of art, to be of any use, must confront it. In a brief excerpt in your textbook (“On Tragic Character,” pp. 1092-93) Aristotle explains his concept of tragedy, making two general points straight away:
- The finest tragedy is complex rather than simple
- Tragedy is a “representation of terrible and piteous events”
Next, Aristotle indicates the kind of hero who should serve as the main character, but first he tells us the kind of character who does not qualify for service as a “tragic hero.” For tragedy, the hero can’t be:
- A good man falling from happiness to misfortune (this will only inspire revulsion, not pity or fear)
- An evil man rising from ill fortune to prosperity (that won’t inspire sympathy, so it can’t arouse pity or fear)
- A wicked man
falling from prosperity into misfortune (that might inspire sympathy,
but not pity or fear, because (1) pity can’t be felt for a person whose
misfortune is deserved, and (2) if we don’t identify with the
character’s wickedness, we won’t be afraid of his fate falling on
us).
The best tragic plot, he concludes, moves this hero (a person of some importance who is good but flawed) from prosperity to misfortune, occasioned not by any innate depravity or badness of character, but by some great mistake he makes (the “tragic flaw”).
In an editorial aside, Aristotle puts in a good word for the poet/dramatist Euripides, who has apparently drawn much criticism for writing too many unhappy endings. But Aristotle insists that this is how it should be. He praises Euripides (whose most famous play is Medea), calling him the “most tragic of the poets,” and insists that tragedy is superior to comedy.
Aristotle spends some time elaborating what he considers the essential qualities of the tragic hero. He explains that “with regard to the characters there are four things to aim at”:
- Goodness. They should reveal through speech and action what their moral choices are, and a “good character will be one whose choices are good.” Any “class of person” may be portrayed as “good”—even women and slaves, though on the whole women are “inferior” and slaves are “utterly base.”
- Appropriateness. Men can be domineering or “manly” (what does he really mean here, I wonder?), but for a woman to appear formidable would be inappropriate.
- Lifelikeness. This is just a shade different from “appropriate.” To be “lifelike,” the hero ought to be “realistic”—“believably human”—not superhuman or “larger than life.” The tragic hero should not be godlike, or akin to the mythical heroes of legend, but just like real human beings.
- Consistency. Once a character is established as having certain traits, these shouldn’t suddenly change.
Now we are going to speed ahead to the middle of the twentieth century (1947) to see how Arthur Miller adapts this concept of tragedy for modern purposes in Death of a Salesman.