LITR 4533 Tragedy UHCL Research Proposals 2004

LITR 4533:
TRAGEDY

Gender Relations in Classical Greek Tragedy

General Description: Gender relations in Classical Greece were strained because women lived in a culture that generally relegated them to the service of men. In fact, men were often hostile toward women instead of being supportive. The response of women was often hostile as well. Evidence of strained gender relations is seen throughout the history, literature, and philosophy of the period. Tragedy in particular yields valuable insights into this problem.

I chose this topic because I am very interested in the cultures of Classical Greece and Rome. And since there is no shortage of material describing the relationships between women and men in Classical Greek Tragedy, I thought it would be fascinating examining various texts for examples.

My project is slightly different in scope than that of the rest of the class since I am a graduate student. My project will be written out-of-class, require more sources, and encompass at least fifteen pages.

I would like to explore comedy and the components that make a piece a comedy. Especially the idea of violence and harm that would make people question why a particular piece is considered a comedy. For example, Much Ado About Nothing has moments of comedy followed by a father wanting and begging for his daughter to die.

The genres that deal with myth are generally romances. I would like to research which qualities of the romances, specifically Westerns, lend themselves to the anti-myth. As you dispel the myth of the cowboy, do you then change the key elements that make the Western a romance? For instance the transcendence ending or the clearly identifiable "good guy" and "bad guy."

I plan on presenting on fairy tales for my genre presentation. So I am proposing to do my research project on the same. I have heard and found several sources that look to fairy tales as political views of the time, and were aimed towards the common man, and not the nobility of the countries. I would like to research this idea of the fairy tales and its affects or intended affects during the time it was written.

Tragedy in modern society is very rare. Tragedy specifically involves someone of high station suffering a tremendous defeat at the hands of his or her greatest strength.

While I agree with this statement in that it agrees with the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, I want to show how this definition has changed over time to include many other situations as tragic and not just pathetic. It has been discussed and agreed upon in class that tragedy has changed, so I want to examine this change.

For my research I could see what literary scholars have said about the subject and use three characters from literature to support my findings. I'd like to use Antigone as an example from classic literature, Jessie for contemporary literature, and Anna Karenin or Madame Bovary for an example from the 19th century.

I want to do my research paper on either Arthur Miller or The Crucible because Miller is one of my favorite playwrights and The Crucible is my favorite play and I would like to learn more about both.

I am interested in researching video games as an emerging form of story-telling. I have played video games for much of my life and have noticed them evolve from a simple form of entertainment for a relatively limited audience into something akin to the movie industry in terms of scope and appeal. Through my research I hope to gain insight into how and why this transformation has taken place, as well as draw parallels between various aspects of video games and movies, books, plays, etc.

I did my presentation on the attention fantasy novels are receiving in American theatre in the contemporary using Lord of the Rings as an example. However, I do not feel done with the work. While it may demonstrate a geekish mentality, I see so much going on with the novel. Now, I really want to study Tolkien’s attempts to not only blend only mythology, but his effort to create new. After all, there are so few works in the world canon of literature that address so many perspectives (theological and historical symbolism, ancient text adaptation, etc.) with such success. Therefore, I have decided to spend a little longer in the Shire.

I've been very interested, as we've gone through the plays of the Greeks to the modern tragedies, in the changing focus from immutable fate of the characters to something more nebulous. The modern playwrights do not seem to rely as heavily as the Greeks on the machinery of fate and foretelling and inevitability within the structure of the play. Shakespeare, a kind of median between the two, seems in several of his plays to be toying with that mechanism. I'd like, for my research project, to examine the element of fate and inevitability within tragic plays.

I would like to further by research about Fairy Tales. I have been looking at several different accounts of the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” from different times and countries. I have noticed that the tale has changed over time seemingly to clean itself up to a more child appropriate level with some exceptions. Most of the earlier versions of the tale are extremely violent or sexual and the more recent accounts are not either of these but also seem to lose the quality and purpose of the tale. I have noticed this “cleaning up” of fairy tales in other old familiar stories such as “Cinderella”, “The Little Mermaid,” and “Snow White.” I would like to examine why. I have been reading a book called The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World by Jack Zipes. The book brings up many things I would like to pursue such as Freud’s idea of how the psyche played into why these tales were created and how the minds of children have changed thus the audience for a fairy tale has changed.