English 345.01 Spring 2003                                                                         

Flores/Machlis

 

Writing Assignment (due in class Tuesday 28 January): Journal Response (250 words, titled, double-spaced, one page) on Twelfth Night that explores the play's dramatic representation of an issue of social (and perhaps psychological) significance that is identified and defined in relation to specific cultural and historical contexts, and prompted in part by one of the online study questions or by the suggestions presented below as well as by your own reactions and understanding.

 

You might choose to suggest the social dimensions or importance of a particular character's desires and relations to and for an another (or to others, including a group or "category" of people); your analysis may also speculate on the degrees of authority or power exercised or available to particular "individuals" or subjects in the play; moreover, how are such identities or relationships represented and enacted (in language and as performed in action on stage--for example, such as in the initial encounter between Olivia and Viola-as-Cesario in 1.5, or in the conversation between Orsino and Viola in 2.4 and in 5.1, or in the duping of Malvolio in 2.5 and 3.4, or in 3.3 and 3.4 with Antonio and Sebastian).

 

Your observations will need to be succinct, but we encourage you to develop and to support your ideas as clearly and as cogently as space allows, including brief citations of specific lines or scenes that illustrate your interpretation. Your response should include, implicitly or explicitly, a statement that makes a claim or presents a thesis with brief explanation and support (such as in the form of "One of Viola's main concerns is that she . . . because . . . . But her desire for . . . conflicts with . . . and she must . . . in order to . . . . The play thus represents . . . in its depiction of . . . . Moreover, it is only through X’s relationship to Y that Z can be realized or established or resolved, even if/though . . . ." This is just a partial example of a structure that might inform your reasoning and writing for this assignment.

 

Here's an observation on the play to add to the study questions on the class website:

 

Jean Howard argues that the "play enacts . . . the containment of gender and class insurgency . . . . the play seems to me to applaud a crossdressed woman who does not aspire to the positions of power assigned men and to discipline a non-crossdressed woman who does" (The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England 112).

 

As directed in the course description and syllabus, it is important that you keep our class discussions in mind, and that you read (and also, in a sense, view) the texts closely and thoughtfully, including McEvoy’s Shakespeare: The Basics.