Essay 1.  Revise & complete genre definition and example-analysis from midterm. Using the Introduction to Genres page, revise and enhance your "working definition" of your chosen genre in the three categories of Subject / Audience genre, Formal genre, and Narrative, and use these categories to describe the genre you began in the midterm. Identify, explain, and analyze two or more text-examples of your genre from your reading or viewing experience. (total length: 6-8 paragraphs, 3+ double-spaced page equivalent)

Essay 2. Revise & complete Learning about Tragedy: Revise and extend your midterm draft on your learning experience with tragedy, referring to the Tragedy term-site, Aristotle's Poetics, & Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, and extending to include Sophocles's Theban trilogy, Hippolytos, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms. (Add 5-8 more paragraphs for at least 10 paragraphs total.)

Essay 3. Revise & complete Special Topics on Tragedy Essay: Identify which special topic on Tragedy and revise and extend your midterm draft. Discuss your topic relative to two or more texts additional course texts since midterm. Besides the research sources you used for the midterm, refer to at least two more research sources from our course website or beyond (term-pages or Model Assignments). You may also briefly refer to literary works beyond our course. (Add 4-5 paragraphs for 8-10 paragraph total, 6-10 double-spaced page equivalent)

All three essays must include revisions & extensions of midterm essays, corrected and unified with extensions for final exam. Each essay will be read and graded as a complete comprehensive essay.

For details on Essays 1-3, scroll down to "Details on Midterm Content."

Special requirements: All three essays must have titles.

Somewhere in your midterm refer directly to something you learned from a previous student's final exam on Model Assignments or, if helpful, this summer's model midterms.

Refer at least once to Aristotle's Poetics and once to Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy somewhere in exam. (Additional references are impressive.)

Unusual feature of midterm and final exam: All 3 parts are session-long writing projects. In response to instructor feedback, additional course readings, and your continued learning, your midterm essay drafts will be revised, updated, and extended in the Final Exam. The three essays you wrote for the Midterm become three longer, complete essays for the Final Exam, graded not only on what you've added but on the overall quality of each entire essay including surface quality and thematic unity.

Rationale: Writing is Literature's most important skill, a multi-level exercise in creative and critical thinking that develops the intellect, industry, and judgment. The best-proven way to improve writing is through guided rewriting.

Final Exam Essay Details

Essay 1.  Revise & complete genre definition and example-analysis from midterm. Using the Introduction to Genres page, revise and enhance your "working definition" of your chosen genre in the three categories of Subject / Audience genre, Formal genre, and Narrative genre, and use these categories to describe the genre you began in the midterm. Identify, explain, and analyze two or more text-examples of your genre from your reading or viewing experience. (total length: 6-8 paragraphs, 3+ double-spaced page equivalent)

Length of Essay 1 & extensions for final exam: Most of your work for final Essay 1 will be revising and improving your midterm draft. Add 2-3 paragraphs to the total length of your midterm draft. Since the midterm draft is 4-7 paragraphs, your final exam will be 6-9 paragraphs? New material may appear earlier in your essay, not just at end. Besides adding what you were supposed to include on the midterm, new material may include more text-examples or more analysis of previous text-examples,

Organization: Use classic "Definition-Example-Analysis" pattern at least 3 times—once for Subject / Audience genre, once for Formal genre, once for Narrative genre (with sub-definitions of tragedy, comedy, romance, and / or satire).

General advice based on midterms: Introduce your chosen genre and text-example(s) as early as possible, and describe to explain the three genre categories. For instance, if your genre is "horror" and your main example is The Walking Dead, introduce The Walking Dead in your opening paragraph and use it to illustrate all three categories of genre: subject/audience, formal, narrative.

Contents: Details below mostly repeat Midterm Assignment + notes on rewriting and extending. See midterm description of Essay 1 for more information about genre choice and text-examples.

"Working Definition": use the Introduction to Genres to define the meaning, importance, and limits of "genre." Specifically define and distinguish Subject / Audience genre, Formal genre, and Narrative genre with brief, general examples based on your chosen genre and its text-examples or other examples raised in class. This "working definition" can be revised, questioned, or extended as you work with text-examples.

You must describe or analyze your chosen genre through all three categories from Introduction to Genres:

1. Subject / Audience genre: What is the subject or content basis of your chosen genre? Does your genre or the way it appears (esp. characters) relate to its audience?

2. Formal genre (2a. narrator or single voice; 2b. dialogue b/w characters; 2c. narrator + dialogue): Of these 3 voices or sets of voices, which characterizes your text-examples? (e.g., if it's a movie, it's usually dialogue, but variations are possible; if it's a novel, it's usually narrator + dialogue). How does this formal genre appear in your text-example? (Provide examples & analyze.)

3. Narrative genre: Tragedy, Comedy, Romance, Satire or combination(s): Which of the four major story patterns plays out in your genre or text-example? Variations and combinations always possible.

Final exam models: 2015

Essay 2. Revise & complete Learning about Tragedy: Revise and extend your midterm draft on your learning experience with tragedy, referring to the Tragedy term-site, Aristotle's Poetics, & Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, and extending to include Sophocles's Theban trilogy, Hippolytos, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms.

Length of Essay 2 on final exam: (Add 5-8 more paragraphs for at least 10 substantial paragraphs total.) (Midterm Essay 2 length was 5-8 paragraphs)

Required references to texts: As examples and illustrations for your learning experience in Tragedy since Midterm, you must refer to passages in the Theban / Oedipus cycle (Oedipus the King, Antigone, & Oedipus at Colonus), Hamlet (selections), Hippolytos, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms, or enough of them that I don't think about what you're leaving out.

If my response-notes to your midterm say you did not adequately refer to our course readings in this essay's earlier draft, incorporate references to examples from Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon + Libation Bearers & Euminides selections) & Mourning Becomes Electra / Homecoming,

After improving or redeveloping your Midterm draft, transition to more paragraphs describing your learning experience since the midterm. In these new paragraphs, focus particularly on tragedies since midterm. What have you learned that is worth learning (or teaching) about tragedy, genre, psychology, families, fate and free will, the individual and the community (or authority), Western Civilization, or other themes or styles relevant to these plays?

Purpose of text references: Students who don't read assignments for Literature classes usually can't keep up with discussions, terms, objectives, and examples, or at best they minimally repeat references to examples described in class. Good students demonstrate they can apply the course's lessons to assigned readings.

Advice on assignment: You can't cover everything about tragedy, but you want to try. The best exams act like they want to cover everything.

Use Tragedy term-page and instructional pages from coursesite to reinforce and extend your learning.

Unify by emphasizing what's most interesting or promising or puzzling to you about tragedy. Illustrate with examples from course texts or beyond. Connect your opening angle or insight to other qualities you're picking up about tragedy and what you've learned so far about these characteristics, with examples from course texts or beyond.

Consistent themes throughout course:

Tragedy as the greatest genre?	Tragedy modernizes.
The tragic flaw.	Spectacle
Tragedy compared / contrasted to comedy and romance.	Tragedy as learning and progress ("Suffering leads to wisdom"); entertainment & education.
Families as love and hate; co-dependent fates. Aristotle's Poetics 13c, 14c; Oedipal Conflict; Electra Complex.	As in Essay 1, analyze tragedy as subject / audience; formal genre; & narrative genre. See Tragedy term-page..

You probably can't refer to all these possibilities, and your essay is judged as much on unified organization as on coverage of content, but the best essays unify as much material as possible.

Final exam models: 2015, 2014, 2012

Essay 3. Revise & complete Special Topics on Tragedy Essay: Identify your special topic on Tragedy and revise and extend your midterm draft. Discuss your topic relative to two or more additional course texts since midterm. Besides the research sources you used for the midterm, refer to at least two more research sources from our course website or beyond (term-pages or Model Assignments). You may also briefly refer to literary works beyond our course. (Add 4-5 paragraphs for 8-10 paragraph total, 6-10 double-spaced page equivalent)

Length of Essay 3 on final exam: 8-10 substantial paragraphs. (Midterm Essay 3 length was 4-5 paragraphs.)

Required text-examples: Two or more additional course texts since Midterm (select from Oedipus the King, Antigone, & Oedipus at Colonus, Hamlet (selections), Hippolytos, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms).

If my response-notes to your midterm say you did not adequately refer to our course readings in this essay's earlier draft, incorporate references to examples from Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon + Libation Bearers & Euminides selections) & Mourning Becomes Electra / Homecoming,

Required research sources: For the final exam, four research sources providing information on your topic are required, usually from the course website. These sources may include term-pages, Model Assignments  on your topic, and / or critical sources like Aristotle's Poetics and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.

Use especially the "essential instructional page(s)" provided for special topics (e.g. spectacle for #4: Spectacle and / or the Sublime). Some of your research sources may be from Model Assignments provided with your special topic. Other recommended research sources include reference books (encyclopedias, handbooks), MLA searches, and interviews with former teachers or professors.

You don't have to agree with your research sources; you can treat them as material to differ with or to provide contrary information; but you have to refer to them. Avoid writing what you could have written without taking our course--writing off the top of your head and repeating familiar cliches makes for bad writing and reading

Default essay organization: The path of least resistance is to describe and unify your report as a "quest" or "journey of learning."

What did you want to learn? Why did you choose this topic?

Where and how does your topic appear in our course texts? (examples + analysis)

What did you find out or learn from your research sources? How does your topic appear in our course texts?

Where has this knowledge taken you? How has your view of your topic changed or developed?

What would you like to learn next? (following from what you learned so far)

How does this knowledge apply to our course or your understanding of tragedy or genre?

Final exam models: 2015, 2014, 2012

Remember that these model assignments on topics related to yours may be used as research sources.