English 210.01 Critical Response Assignment:Death and the Maiden

Due in class on Tuesday 21 March 2006; titled; length: 900 words, single-spaced.

 

This writing assignment directs you to explore the play's representation of a significant issue or rhetorical strategy that is identified in relation to specific cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts and concerns. Your topic and focus may be prompted in part by one of the online study questions, by our readings in critical theory, by our discussions in class and online, and of course by your reactions and understanding. You might think of the response as a scaled down, sharply focused critical essay, one that contains the kernel of a hypothesis and topic that might serve as the cornerstone or shaping idea for a longer essay. Your analysis can be quite "thesis-driven," or you may prefer a more reflective, question and problem-posing approach.

 

For example, you might explain the social dimensions or importance of a particular character's desires and relations to and for another (or to others, including a group or "category" of people or to/for some concept); 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 (presented rhetorically in language and through narrative and dramatic structure and style.

 

Your observations will need to be succinct, but I encourage you to develop and to support your ideas as clearly and as cogently as space allows, including brief citations of specific lines that illustrate your interpretation, and perhaps use of summary and paraphrase in support of your analysis. Your response should include a statement that makes a claim or presents a thesis with brief explanation and support (such as in the form of “One of Paulina'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 though . . . .” This is just a partial and overstated (!) example of a structure that might inform your reasoning and writing for this assignment--the main advice is to consider that you may find it effective to compose a thesis for your response that maps out for readers the important points or problems that you want to develop and to discuss.

 

Assume your audience is familiar with the play (or film version of the play), but take care to articulate clearly your understanding and interpretation of the material, especially problems or contradictions that seem difficult to resolve.

 

Keep in mind that your critical response should supplement or build upon our work; in short, don't simply repeat an argument we have already substantially discussed unless you were engaged substantially in that discussion.

 

As with the previous writing assignments, you are not required to consider to what extent and how a secondary piece of criticism has influenced your views and understanding, but if you wish to incorporate what you have learned from external criticism or historical/cultural research, please do so.

 

Some writers, for example, use the first paragraph to describe an interpretative problem that arises in a specific passage or in a character (and the relations of that character to others or to the play's cultural context), or to present a conflict of critical approaches to a topic or to the play. Here are some more ways to question and to explore the functions and effects of this work.

 

In what ways, for example, does Death and the Maiden represent a particular cultural (social, political, economic, class, religion, gender) perspective, problem, or conflict?

 

Recent cultural and historical criticism often turns upon debate over whether the literary texts represent (instantiate, produce?) efforts to subvert or resist dominant ideology, or whether the text's' final effects work to contain, appropriate, or even reproduce such efforts, thus sustaining the power of the dominant order of things. Consider the utility of this opposition between subversion and containment in relation to specific conflicts and contradictions in the play. Moreover, when does this polarized opposition seem less useful and incisive? Are there ways to negotiate the seeming impasse?

 

Does the play offer solutions to the problems it articulates? Why? Do you find Dorfman's Afterword helpful--how so?

 

Is there something about your own cultural/personal position and history that you want to explore in relation to your interpretation?

 

Can you put one or more chapters (theoretical ideas/concepts/approaches/modes of inquiry) from Barry together with this play to produce an exploratory analysis in your critical response?