Discussion Questions (week 14)

Welcome to the end! This week there are several short questions to think through in preparation for the final exam.

1. Read through the preliminary exam instructions (which might soon be replaced by the official exam instructions) and the final exam study guide carefully. What questions do you have?
2. Look over your lecture notes from the last half of the semester. What questions do you have about
   1. Terms?
   2. Themes?
   3. Main ideas?
   4. Historical contexts?
   5. Other arguments and ideas Prof. Dubrow has shared in lecture?
3. There are four sample questions posted in the study guide. Although these questions will not appear on the final exam, they will get you started thinking about the broader topics that will appear. Pick one of the sample questions and answer it with reference to The Tempest.
4. To conclude our literary analytical work for the semester, develop a close reading of the last lines of The Tempest. How does Prospero's epilogue differ from Puck's epilogue in MSND? How does it differ from the Chorus's epilogue in H5?
   
5. Think ahead to the evaluations I will ask you to fill out at the end of discussion. What do you feel were some of the strengths of discussion? More importantly, what do you feel were its weaknesses? I tried to address some of the feedback you gave me after the midterm evaluations, but how well did I actually do? Next semester I will probably be teaching a section of English 100, which is an introductory composition class. If you have any thoughts about how writing can be taught most effectively I would love to hear them.

Discussion questions (week 13)

We have two goals for this week, best articulated through lame puns:

• Finalizing the rules and expectations of close reading
• Essaying to simplify the rules for finding and articulating a thesis statement

To which end, here are two discussion questions:

1. In lecture this week we have looked at multiple ways of reading Prospero and Caliban, first by looking at images from productions to see how they are presented as characters (Druid or Bishop; monster or victim) and then by looking at the sorts of speech acts they use.

   Do the same thing with Miranda, in the following order:

   1. Google for images of Miranda from productions of The Tempest -- you might want to print out one or two to bring to class so you can make your point
   2. Identify the different ways we can read Miranda's character: we know that Prospero can be read as manipulative or as gentle, and that Caliban can be read as monstrous and as victimized. What are two options for our reading of Miranda?
   3. Read Miranda's first speech -- I.ii.1ff (1662a)
   4. Identify the sorts of speech acts she uses (commands? curses? storytelling?)
   5. Close read her speech in at least two ways you identified as being possible approaches to her character

2. When Prof. Dubrow was talking about her own recent analytical work, she explained, first, that the topic she was interested in was the relationship between space and storytelling. Then she defined that relationship a bit more specifically: How does storytelling create or control space? This process is fairly straightforward: Prof. Dubrow chose two topics* that we have tackled this semester -- space and storytelling -- and asked a question that tried to articulate the relationship between them.

   Now you try! Pick two topics that pertain to The Tempest and formulate a question that asks about the relationship between these topics. Does one topic control or shape the other? Are they interdependent?

   * Note that a "topic" is not necessarily the same thing as a theme. A theme can certainly be a topic, but we've never really thought about space as a theme, or closure. Also, you should not feel tied down to the themes Prof. Dubrow has put on the board in lecture.

Discussion questions (week 12)

1. [This question is more or less a repeat of question 3 from our last discussion. You are welcome to recycle your notes.] Look back at your notes from Prof. Dubrow’s lecture about soliloquies from two weeks ago, and particularly the way she connects the soliloquy to a specific function—the creation of sympathy between character and audience. Do the same with a different form: the list. What is the function of the list? Why are there so many in this play? Answer this question by looking closely at one list, e.g.
   • II.iii.28
   • III.i.91ff
   • IV.i passim
2. I am interested in seeing if we can use the form of discourse that seems to be at the heart of Macbeth to better understand its characters. How do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth soliloquize differently? How can we see the way they soliloquize as representative of differences in their characters?

   Look at four soliloquies: Lady Macbeth's "Unsex me here..." (I.v.38-54), Macbeth's "If it were done..." (I.vii.1-28) and his "Is this a dagger which I see before me..." (II.i.33-64), and Lady Macbeth's "Out, damn'd spot" (V.i.35-68). Here are some specific questions to work through:

   • How do the contexts of these soliloquies differ? Are they -- like the "Two truths are told" soliloquy -- just vocalizations of what the character is thinking? Are they spoken out loud? What do these differences mean?
   • What are the purposes of these soliloquies -- answering questions, a là the Senecan monologue? Giving the audience insight into characters' psychologies?
   • How do they use metaphors (and other figurative language) differently?
   • How do they refer to the physical world differently?

Discussion questions (week 11)

Our focus in discussion this Friday will be IV.i, the show of kings scene. You might answer the following questions in reference to this specific scene, but I urge you to think about the relationship between the way these images and techniques appear not only in IV.i but everywhere in Macbeth...

1. Last week, we spent some time discussing the relationship between power and the supernatural. We talked specifically about the way Billy Pilgrim, in Slaughterhouse V, uses the supernatural (or at least unnatural) power of time travel to escape the forces of history. How, though, do we see characters in Macbeth succumbing to or escaping supernatural powers? By looking closely at IV.i, think about the specific powers of the supernatural in Macbeth. What can the three witches do? To what extent can characters in Macbeth escape this power? What is the category crisis here?
   
   
2. What categories of gender does Macbeth set up? How does the play throw these categories into crisis? Think both about the larger structure of the play -- particularly its emphasis on inheritance and succession -- but focus on one or two speeches that taclke the suggestions and ambiguities of gender. There are many moments you might think about; here is a smattering of lines:
   • I.v.40ff: "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here..."
   • II.iii.83ff: "O gentle lady, / 'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak: / The repetition in a woman's ear / Would murther as it fell"
   • III.iv57: "Are you a man?"
     
   • IV.i.79ff: "laugh to scorn / The pow'r of man; for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth"
   • V.viii.17f: "Accursed be the tongue that tells me so, / For it hath cow'd my better part of man!"
     
     
3. Prof. Dubrow has spoken about the significance of naming and predication as rhetorical systems in Macbeth. Think about a third (but related) system: lists. How do lists relate to naming and predication? How do they work as speech acts -- what are their direct and indirect effects? IV.i is rich with lists, but look also at lists elsewhere in the play, e.g. III.i.91ff.
   
   

Discussion questions (week 10)

Remember to type out your answers to these questions if you want to get credit for ideas that you don't have a chance to share in discussion!

1. Our discussions of Shakespeare often return to his discussion of power -- perhaps the power sought by monarchs (Theseus, Henry, Macbeth) or the power sought by private citizens (Hermia and Lysander, Shylock, Pistol). But how does Kurt Vonnegut discuss power and the powerful in Slaughterhouse V? How is this discussion of power different from and similar to the discussion of power in the Shakespeare plays (and sonnets) we have read -- particularly Henry V and Macbeth? Why is Vonnegut treating power similarly to the way Shakespeare treats it? Why is he treating it differently?
   
   
2. [This question might be rewritten later this week if I can think of a better way to phrase it.] In what ways does Shakespeare's narrative technique in Henry V and in Macbeth seem similar to Vonnegut's narrative technique in Slaughterhouse V? Think, here, about the order in which the two writers put their plots together: the use of the Chorus in H5, say, or of the problematic narrator in S5. You might think about how all three texts move between the supernatural (God in H5, the Tralfamadorians in S5, the witches/Fates in M) and the ordinary.
   

Discussion questions (week 9)

Discussion questions are back! In case you have forgotten their rules, my expectations are as follows:

• Before discussion you will spend about an hour reviewing your notes, rereading portions of the play, and thinking through answers to these questions.
• You will type and print your answers so that, in theory, I might be able to call on you in discussion on Friday and you will be ready with an answer. (Historically, I haven't called on people; still, I like having this as a threat.)

There are two questions for this week:

1. Take any speech in H5 as your own -- it doesn't have to be as long as the Archbishop's speech that we looked at on Friday, but it should be at least 30 lines. Look at the speech for four things:
   1. How and why does it use repetition?
   2. How does it try to persuade its audience?
      
   3. In a more general sense, how does it suggest the techniques by which language asserts power?
   4. How does the speech respond to, create, and transform metaphors that exist elsewhere in the scene or the play?
      
   
   
   
2. Put together an outline of Henry V by act, noting the setting, main characters and main action for each scene. This should take about ten minutes. Spend fifteen or twenty minutes thinking about the logic of this organization. Why does Shakespeare fly us around so much? Why do we jump to the French side when we do? Why do we get scenes with the barfolk when we do? Why do we get scenes with Katherine and Alice when we do?
   

Discussion questions (week 7)

In preparation for the midterm next week, our discussion on Friday will function as a sort of mini-review. To this end, I'd like you to come to class having completed three review-centric tasks:

1. Write up a list of the terms that Heather has put on the board, and their definitions. I'd like to spend the beginning of discussion reviewing terms you're unsure about.
   
   
2. Write up a list of the themes that pertain to MSND, the sonnets, MoV, and H5. These lists should include those themes Heather has put on the board or suggested in her lectures, but don't stop there -- add to these lists any themes you find striking or persuasive but which haven't come up in class.
   
   Pay particular attention to the themes that apply to multiple texts -- again, these may or may not be themes that Heather has put on the board.
   
   
3. MOST IMPORTANTLY, write an essay question in the style of Heather's examples. You can download the essay questions Heather wrote for last year's midterm here (PDF). Notice that these questions usually
   1. Require comparison either between plays or within a single play
   2. Connect to ideas Heather has raised in lecture once or twice, but not to issues central to those lectures
   3. Ask you to connect a theme (e.g. the role of power in politics and in relationships) to a technique (e.g. closure, pairing, mirroring, etc.)
      
   
   

Discussion question (week 4)

There is only one discussion question this week, but it comes in many parts:

1. Print out sonnet 147 triple-spaced, identifying subtleties of meaning and connections between words and ideas therein
   
2. Write out the surface meaning of the sonnet -- what is its plot?
3. Identify and explain the wordplay in the sonnet: what purposes do these puns serve?
4. How does the speaker change the metaphor from quatrain to quatrain?
5. What does the volta change?
6. Does the couplet provide closure?
   
7. What expectations does this sonnet violate?
8. How is the form of this sonnet related to its content?
   

Discussion questions (week 3)

[Apologies if you saw a couple of questions up here earlier--for a few hours on Tuesday I had in mind a different approach to tomorrow's discussion.]

In discussion this week we will focus wholly on MSND since we will get to spend next two discussions talking exclusively about the sonnets.

1. How do events in act V mirror events from the first four acts? Compare one event in act V with an event that it seems to mirror from earlier in MSND. As your "event," you might want to use the speech about which you are writing your mini-essay.

   List what these events have in common and list, also, the ways in which these events differ. Although this is fundamentally a question about structure, think also about word use and staging: how does Shakespeare change the meaning of a word or of an idea from an earlier act to act V? (This is just a new version of the third discussion question from last week.)

2. On Tuesday, Heather suggested that the play within the play at the end of MSND served to fully reverse the tragic momentum of act I. List three more reasons the play within the play might be at the end of MSND. You might want to think in terms of politics, social class, and/or the purpose of art.

3. We should spend the last twenty minutes of discussion addressing your own questions about MSND. Come in with a question about the text, or a problem that you can't resolve -- a scene, character, idea, or conclusion that doesn't make any sense.

Discussion questions (week 2)

N.b.: Beginning this week, I will call on students to begin our discussion of posted topics. Your answers need not be formal disquisitions, but I expect you to be prepared with a thoughtful and interesting response.

For this reason, I strongly recommend typing up notes -- not only your answers to these questions but also questions of your own or thoughts you have had à propos of Heather's lectures.

1. Spend ten minutes thinking about the word green. Make three lists:
   1. What are its denotations? (You might want to consult the Oxford English Dictionary definition. Focus on meanings current in 1595.) 
   2. Just as importantly, what are its connotations? 
   3. What might green symbolize?


2. How do the meanings you've developed open up new ways of reading MSND? For example, does the meaning of the word depend on where it is spoken? Is a green in the court the same thing as a green in the woods?

   This is a fairly broad question, which you should go about answering by concentrating on one or two specific instances of the word in the text. By my count, Shakespeare uses green nine times:

   • I.i.185 (Helena)
   • II.i.9 (fairy)
   • II.i.28 (Puck)
   • II.i.94 & 99 (Titania)
   • III.i.3 (Quince)
     
   • III.i.167 (Titania)
   • III.ii.393 (Oberon)
   • V.i.335 (Thisby)


3. Pick two mirrored events in MSND -- that is, whole scenes or parts of scenes that seem to echo each other. (Example: Oberon applying the love potion to Titania's eyelids and Puck applying the love potion to Lysander's. You can't use this example, of course, but have to find your own.) Now think about these mirrored events structurally: how are they similar and how are they dissimilar? Why is Shakespeare intentionally paralleling these two events?

Discussion questions (week 1)

Every week, before discussion on Friday, I will post one or two discussion questions right here. Usually I will post these questions after Heather's second lecture of the week.

Posted below are the two questions I want to focus on in our discussion on Friday. Please take half an hour to think them over -- you might even want to jot down some possible answers, so that you have ideas to begin with in Friday's discussion.

1. Think about the economics of English 162 for a minute. The University of Wisconsin - Madison is paying Heather's salary -- which I hope is quite a lot -- and mine, and that of the other five TAs for the class; it is paying to keep Humanities 3650 clean, cool, and in working order; and it is making some three hundred students -- many of whom just want to get degrees in kinesthesiology and get out of here -- take this class to fulfill a gen. ed. requirement, thereby slowing down students' academic careers and delaying the date at which they can begin donating lots and lots of money to their alma mater. Then multiply this class by the 26 University of Wisconsin campuses.

   Don't get me wrong: I love that the University is paying so much money to make sure that no student gets a Wisconsin degree without spending three months working through the interpretive knots of English literature, but I have to wonder: Why does the University find studying Shakespeare so enormously valuable? Why is it worth the expenditure it receives?

2. Think about the Toolbox question Heather gave us this afternoon: How does the context in which a text is encountered inform our understanding its meaning? Apply this question to the way we are encountering Shakespeare's plays: How does the fact that we are encountering MSND as written words rather than as a theatrical performance shape our understanding of the meaning of the play? You can be even more detailed about this: how is the way we read MSND different when we encounter it in a 5.6-pound book with Shakespeare's 36 other plays sitting around it, with copious scholarly annotation at the bottom of every page? What would it be like to, instead, encounter the play in the 0.15-pound Dover edition, which is completely without annotation?

3. In lecture this week, Heather has given several examples of how the staging of a scene can substantially alter its meaning or, at least, its mood. Pick a few lines from Act I or Act II of MSND (not ones that Heather has discussed, though). If you were directing the play, how could you stage those lines two completely different ways: once comically and once tragically; or, in Heather's words, once dreamily and once nightmarishly?