LITR 4533 Tragedy

Final Exam summer 2014

Content (details below)

Two Essays (or possibly 1 long essay for Essay 1 and two short ones for Essay 2)

Essay 1: Long essay (5-7+ paragraphs) describing and unifying your overall learning experience concerning tragedy and other genres

Essay 2: Special Topics: 1 long essay on topic (or combination of topics) from list below.

Essay lengths: Better essays are usually more substantial & developed, and therefore longer—
usually 6-10 paragraphs, depending on paragraph length, but acceptable essays often run 4-7 paragraphs.

Special requirements:

• Title your essays.

• Refer at least once to a previous final exam or one of this semester's midterms (besides your own)

• Refer at least once to Aristotle's Poetics somewhere in exam. (More than one reference is impressive.)

• Refer at least once to Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy somewhere in exam. (More than one reference is impressive.)

Audience: a future member of our class (who may read your exam on Model Assignments). Help that student learn his way through our course materials as you have. Make them care!

Of course your ultimate audience is me, your ancient instructor, but I mostly respond to how well you can show what you're learning, both in terms of responsibly accounting for essential course content and how readable and compelling your writing can be.

Unusual part of final exam: Essays 1 & 2 already started with midterm.

• Unless you feel like starting over, use your midterm drafts for Essay 1 & Essay 2 as your starting points or foundations for Essays 1 & 2 in this final exam.
• Improve and extend those midterm drafts, incorporating examples from post-midterm texts and new ideas from class, instructional course webpages, and your own insights.
  
• Your topic and its development may change considerably—OK if you’re thinking and writing fresh. If you change topics altogether, announce and describe change. You can refer to what you wrote before as a way to change emphasis or direction.
  
• Revise your midterm drafts so they go farther faster. Re-think what you thought before. j(Revising is the best way to learn how to improve your own writing.)
  
• Losing situation: final exam repeats problems identified in midterm response, with no evident effort at improvement.

Overlap of Essays 1 & 2 with each other and your midterm is not necessarily a problem.

Content Details

Bullets are not checklists but only potential prompts for essay development. I read whatever you write and don't review the bullet-lists unless they help with my response-note.

Essay 1: Long essay (5-7+ paragraphs) organizing and describing your overall learning experience concerning tragedy

assignment risk: “Laundry list” organization of this-and-that topic or prompt.

advice: Connect parts. Highlight theme and summarize progress on overall point.

Potential prompts or threads:

• What did you know about tragedy (± other genres) when you started the course, and how has that knowledge been varied, extended, or challenged?
• What useful instruction have you gained on genres in general, and tragedy in particular?
• Which aspects of tragedy seem valuable and why?
• Apply to teaching and learning, acknowledging difficulties with instruction.
• Given young readers’ natural preference for modern texts with which they can identify, how to make Tragedy attractive and worthwhile?
• If classical Greece is a foundation for modern civilization, how may tragedy help teach that subject?
• Since many enter the course familiar with the tragic flaw, how may that concept be developed? If not an exclusive focus of Tragedy’s study, how may it be useful or related to other features?
• What other dimensions of the class helped you learn about tragedy, classical Greece & Western Civilization, or literature generally?

Essay 2: Special Topics: 1 long essay or 2 shorter essays (scroll down for details and prompts)

One long essay (6-8 paragraphs) or two shorter essays (4-6 paragraphs each) on choice of topics or questions below.

1. Tragedy and its Updates (Obj. 2a)

2. “Plot is the Soul of Tragedy” + Comedy & Romance (Obj.1, Aristotle’s Poetics, Genres handout)

3. Families in Tragedy + The Oedipal / Electra Conflict

4. Tragedy and Spectacle, including the Sublime (Obj. 2)

5. Classical Humanism and Judeo-Christianity or other religious traditions in Tragedy (Obj. 3)

6. Tragedy as greatest genre--extension of midterm essay.

7. Tragedy’s cultural and historical backgrounds (Obj. 3a)

8. Sophocles and O'Neill: a review of styles, subjects, and stature in four plays.

9. Teaching Tragedy

10. Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and the Apolline / Dionysiac.

11. Aesthetics of Tragedy: the sublime and beyond: What pleasures and pains with tragedy?

12. Self-generated topic of your choice that would be recognizable to a member of our class.

(scroll down for details and prompts)

Detailed descriptions of Essay 2 Special Topics

Some questions or answers overlap. Don't fear repeating or reinforcing essential points you make elsewhere.

1. Tragedy and its Updates (Obj. 2a)

Review and evaluate two sets of texts:

• Oedipus the King > Hamlet
• Agamemnon / Oresteia > The Homecoming (Mourning Becomes Electra)
• Oedipus at Colonus > Samson Agonistes
• Hippolytus > Phaedra > Desire Under the Elms

Introduction / Conclusion: Review course organization according to this “original version > updated version” pattern. How does Tragedy evolve from its classical origins? What disappears or appears as tragedies become more modern? What does the "original > updated" pattern show about Tragedy, pro and con?

Essential instructional page(s):  Tragedy Modernized

Model Assignments: Kat Henderson, "Forms of Tragedy: From Aristotle to the Modern World"; Haylie Unger, Tragic Changes?; Danielle Maldonado, Tragedy and its Updates

2. “Plot is the Soul of Tragedy” ± Comedy & Romance

Starting with Aristotle, review the preeminence of plot in Tragedy—but what problems are raised by this claim? Why does study of Tragedy often focus on character instead of plot? What are the costs and benefits of focusing on plot?

Clarify the tragic narrative by comparing it with Comedy and Romance.  Defend Comedy and Romance, but above all compare and contrast with Tragedy. Focus on these genres’ distinct narratives and appeals, but always refocus on Tragedy.

Suggested textual references: Aristotle on plot from Poetics. Extensive references to “Narrative Genres.” Examples from 2+ tragedies and from at least one comedy and romance either from presentations or your reading / viewing experience. You may briefly refer to additional texts, plays, or films as helpful.

Essential instructional page(s): Aristotle’s Poetics (IX), Narrative; Tragedy; Narrative Genres

Model Assignments: Susan Newman, Two Essays: B1 "Tragedy: an Evolving Genre" & B2 "Plotting Against Genres"

3. Families in Tragedy + The Oedipal / Electra Conflict

Families normally repress sexuality and violence, but tragedy expresses such impulses (including punishment). Describe and evaluate families in classical and modern tragedies. How may you come to terms with the persistence of the Oedipal or Electra conflicts in these “tragic families?”

• Is the Oedipal / Electra conflict an individual or family issue?
• Acknowledge and incorporate Aristotle’s remarks on families (Poetics XIII, XIV)

Organization: Start with natural "yuck" defenses, but why does Tragedy return obsessively to such outrageous plots and themes? As a working thesis, consider how Tragedy makes people learn--and more or less enjoy themselves in the process.

Suggested textual references: Oedipus the King and The Oresteia / Agamemnon or Mourning Becomes Electra / The Homecoming need  to be mentioned at least, but other tragedies also provide examples.

Essential instructional page(s): Oedipal Conflict, Electra Complex, Aristotle’s Poetics (13c, 14c)

Model Assignments: Umaymah Shahid, "Families in Tragedy and the Oedipal / Electra Conflict"; Brandy Dornelly, "Keeping It in the Family"; Melissa King, All in the Family

4. Spectacle and the Sublime

Tragedy offers various examples of spectacle and the Sublime.

• Review your understanding of these terms, explaining them with definitions and examples from texts and beyond.
• Keep the terms close or connected to each other but also distinct.
• How do these concepts connect to Tragedy's purposes and potential audience reactions.

Trickiest feature of this question: Even though you’re discussing “spectacle,” its examples in Tragedy (and connections to the Sublime) may involve repression of spectacle—is it shown or merely described in words?

Essential instructional page(s): spectacle, the Sublime, Aristotle’s Poetics

Model Assignments: Allison Evans, Spectacle & Sublime (1 of 2 short essays); Whitney Evans, Part B:  Tragedy and Spectacle, Including the Sublime (Obj. 2)

5. Classical Humanism and Judeo-Christianity or other religious traditions in Tragedy

How does a student of literature, whether religious or not, balance or mediate “interfaces” between classical Greek humanism emphasizing reason and empirical perceptions, and Judeo-Christian scriptural traditions emphasizing revelation or revealed truth? Keep texts and examples in sight. Control a big subject by referring to the plays available.

• Popular model for such discussions: “culture war” between faith-based society and secular humanism. What alternatives to the “warfare” model between these aspects of Western Civilization? (Consider dialogue & dialectic)
  
• Belief in Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, and knowledge of Oedipus, Theseus, and Phaedra are now categorized as “mythology,” yet attitudes toward gods and humanity in classical tragedy often sound like modern anxieties about religion—and modern religion (as in Desire Under the Elms) can sound like Greek religion.
   
• As a secular public institution, UHCL neither endorses nor prohibits religious expression, but what limits are observed in teaching these two mainstreams of Western civilization in secular public schools or religious private schools?

Suggested or possible textual references:

• Course texts: Oedipus at Colonus, Gospel at Colonus (video), Samson Agonistes, & Desire Under the Elms; Bacchae
   
• Scriptural Backgrounds to Hippolytus, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms; St. Paul meets the Greeks on Mars Hill / Areopagus (court mentioned in Oedipus at Colonus)

Essential instructional page(s): Two mainstreams of Western civilization, Christian Humanism, Classical Greek Poets & Philosophers, Humanism; Teaching Literature with Religion

Model Assignments: Andy Feith, "Translating religious values into universal values"

6. Tragedy as the greatest genre

Objective 3 highlights Tragedy as “the supreme genre in western culture and art.” Why or how may Tragedy be considered the greatest genre? Also, how may this greatness be questioned? (Compare to Comedy and Romance?)

Essential instructional page(s): greatness of tragedy; popular, classic, & representative literature

7. Tragedy’s cultural and historical backgrounds (Obj. 3)

What kind of society produces Tragedy? What do you learn from this association between art and its social background?

Introduction / Conclusion: Since this essay may be more historical than cultural, you might begin by reviewing the reasons for your interest and your sources of knowledge. As a working thesis, what may you learn through the question’s suggested relationship between historical culture and heroic tragedy? For your conclusion, resolve your observations and consider where our own civilization is in relation to Tragedy?  

Essential instructional page(s): greatness of tragedy (scroll down for historical periods)

Model Assignments: Jennifer Hamilton, "The World of Tragedy"

8. Sophocles and O'Neill: review styles, subjects, and stature in 5+ plays.

Review and evaluate the only two playwrights by whom we read two or more complete plays. Reviewing the plays, establish how their works exemplify tragic style and subject matter--but also contrast their works and styles.

Suggested Textual references:

• Plays by Sophocles: Oedipus the King; Antigone, & Oedipus at Colonus 
• Plays by Eugene O’Neill: The Homecoming (part 1 of Mourning Becomes Electra); Desire Under the Elms (+ references to other O’Neill plays if familiar) 
  

Essential instructional page(s): Eugene O'Neill

9. Teaching Tragedy

American high schools equip most students in Tragedy with some pre-knowledge toward this course's intensive study. The purpose of this essay is to reflect on your status as a student and potential teacher of Tragedy in various classrooms.

Introduction / Conclusion: Review what knowledge you brought to our course and how it provided a background for managing our materials. As a working thesis, characterize your knowledge of Tragedy and survey what aspects may be useful to your teaching career.

Body paragraphs: Review several texts or their critical features that are appropriate to various classrooms. Compare and contrast what you learned in high school with what you learned here, and what from this course might transfer back to a high school classroom. What did we leave out that high school lessons successfully managed? (e. g., high schools’ traditional emphasis on the Tragic Hero and the Tragic Flaw, which may be easier to test than plot.) You may also discuss teaching techniques in this class and others, but return to the subject matter of Tragedy + how and why it is learned.

Suggested Textual references: Refer to two or three plays from our course that might work for your students, or that work for you and what lessons you’d like to develop, but welcome also to discuss plays outside this course. The danger of this question is that writers take their eyes off the texts to look at potential students and classes.

Essential instructional page(s): mimesis, imitation, or representation; Purpose of Literature: to Entertain & Inform; Teaching Literature with Religion; many other possibilities

10. Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and the Apolline / Dionysiac.

Review our course's use of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, focusing on his distinction of the Apolline and Dionysiac aspects of tragedy, and apply Nietzsche's and your insights to two tragedies studied in our course, or to 1 course tragedy and 1 text (tragic or not) from your readings beyond our course.

Essential instructional page(s): Apolline / Dionysiac

11. Aesthetics of Tragedy: the sublime and beyond: What pleasures and pains with tragedy?

If "learning is the greatest pleasure" and both learning and pleasure are the purposes of art, what balance does tragedy strike between the work of learning and and the pleasures of mimesis?

Essential instructional page(s): mimesis, imitation, or representation; Purpose of Literature: to Entertain & Inform; the Sublime, Aristotle’s Poetics; popular, classic, & representative literature

c

12. Self-generated topic of your choice that would be recognizable to a member of our class: What did you learn or see in our course that you're ready to explore on your own?

Based on our readings and connecting at least tangentially to our objectives and discussions, develop your own topic for Part B.

Whatever topic you come up, write to benefit or inform a reader from our course.

• This topic may be completely different from this exam’s other questions.
• Or spin off one or more of the questions above.
• Or combine two or more questions above into a new subject or issue.
• Your topic may be something we discussed that this exam hasn't isolated, or something we should have discussed—why didn't we?

Suggested textual references: Your topic will dictate the number and selection of texts. Apply your thesis and points to examples from our texts.

Model Assignments: Allison Evans, Internal Characterization (1 of 2 short essays)