Details for All English 1205 Writing Assignments: Essay #1, Essay #2, Essay #3, and the Final Essay

General Guidelines

Our task in this class is two-fold: to read, and to write. Our reading is outlined on the course syllabus; our writing is outlined below. Each of the essays for this course should be approximately 1000 words in length. In your writing, please be specific, and quote closely when and where appropriate. But these should be fairly free-form papers: please write what you actually do see, and what you actually do feel.

If you are wondering about citation format, I recommend MLA style to organize your work and document your sources, but if there is another recognized format that you prefer, that's fine too. The important thing, from my perspective, is that if and when you consult a source, you make that consultation abundantly clear in your writing through proper quotation and citation. There is a note on the course syllabus concerning plagiarism that I would ask you to revisit. If you are wondering whether or not you need to credit a particular source you have used, the answer is always an enthusiastic "yes!"  

1. Essay #1 (Tuesday, May 20): Oedipus the King or Beowulf

Please submit an approximately 1000-word essay on one of the following topics to kendall.shields@smu.ca by the end of the day (11:59PM) Tuesday, May 20. Please reread the "General Guidelines" at the top of this post and keep them in mind as you prepare this work. Some topics are rather focused, while others are more open-ended; where possible, my hope is that you will choose a topic relevant to your own interests and expertise.

Here are your options:

a) Which features of the genre "tragedy" do we find in Oedipus the King?  

b) In Oedipus the King, is Oedipus free, or is he ruled by fate? Is Oedipus able to make meaningful choices in the world Sophocles presents us? 

c) In a 2007 interview, David Simon described his television series The Wire as "Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak." We might well say the same of several other recent series, such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or Sons of Anarchy for example. Examine this notion of "Greek tragedy for the new millennium" with reference to Sophocles' Oedipus the King and any aspect of The Wire, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or Sons of Anarchy you choose. Focus on a single scene, a particular character, a notable episode, or a series as a whole. NOTE: If there is another series or film that you wish to analyze as "Greek tragedy for the new millennium," I encourage you to do so.

d) What is the relationship between the seemingly Christian Beowulf poet and his/her pagan material? What is the narrator's stance toward his/her subject? How is this expressed?

e) How does Beowulf's understanding of fate shape his actions? What does the poem have to say about the nature of fate broadly?

f) Which conventions (or "topoi," or "tropes") of the modern fantasy genre do we find present in Beowulf? To what extent has Beowulf shaped our expectations of that genre? In addition to fantasy literature, film, and television, you may wish to consider fantasy video and computer games as well.

g) "An axe-age, a sword-age, shields will be gashed: there will be a wind-age and a wolf-age before the world is wrecked." How might the Norse myth of Ragnarok inform or shape our understanding of Beowulf? 

h) Consider one (or more) of the following TV and film adaptations of Beowulf. How does the adaptation deal with the original text? What is lost in the adaptation? What is gained? Is the adaptation true to the spirit of the original text? If not, how does it differ? Please be as specific as possible when referring to particular scenes from the films. Suggestions: (i) Grendel Grendel Grendel, a 1981 Australian cartoon (in ten parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), (ii) "Heroes and Demons", a 1995 episode of Star Trek: Voyager, (iii) Beowulf (1999), a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy b-movie starring Christopher Lambert, (iv) Beowulf and Grendel, a 2005 Sturla Gunnarsson film starring Gerard Butler and Sarah Polley, (v) Beowulf (2007), a motion-capture/CGI film with Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, and John Malkovich among others, directed by Robert Zemeckis.

2. Essay #2 (Tuesday, June 3): Hamlet or Frankenstein

Please submit an approximately 1000-word essay on one of the following topics to kendall.shields@smu.ca by the end of the day (11:59PM) Tuesday, June 3. Please reread the "General Guidelines" at the top of this post and keep them in mind as you prepare this work. Some topics are rather focused, while others are more open-ended; where possible, my hope is that you will choose a topic relevant to your own interests and expertise.

Here are your options:

a) "Hamlet is a play about theatricality," the critic Harold Bloom has argued, "and not about revenge." Evaluate the merit of Bloom's provocative statement.  

b) Consider one (or more) of the following film/TV adaptations of Hamlet. How does the adaptation deal with the original text? What is lost in the adaptation? What is gained? Is the adaptation true to the spirit of the original text? If not, how does it differ? Please be as specific as possible when referring to particular scenes from the films. Suggestions: (i) Laurence Olivier's 1948 production, (ii) Kenneth Branagh's 1996 textually complete version (in three parts), (iii) Michael Almereyda's 2000 adaptation to a modern setting starring Ethan Hawke, (iv) Gregory Doran's 2009 BBC production starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. There are certainly many other options, and I encourage you to pursue any that interest you.

c) In Hamlet, we arguably encounter the Oedipus complex. How is the Oedipus complex represented in popular culture? How closely do popular representations of the complex align with Sigmund Freud's own statements on the matter? To what ends are the Oedipus complex employed in the film/episode/text you have chosen? Suggestions: (ii) "Tennis the Menace," a 2001 episode of The Simpsons , (ii) "Motherboy XXX," a 2005 episode of Arrested Development (available from me; also available on Netflix), (iii) "Little Boats," a 2007 episode of Weeds (available from me; also available on Netflix),  (iv) Incendies, an Academy Award-nominated Canadian film from 2010, (v) Psycho, a 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film. There are certainly many other options, and I encourage you to pursue any that interest you.

d) In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, writes that "[a] great proportion of the misery, that wanders, in hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents." How might this quotation relate to Shelley's novel Frankenstein?

e) Which conventions (or "topoi" or "tropes") of the modern science fiction genre do we find present in Frankenstein? To what extent has Frankenstein shaped our expectations of that genre? In addition to science fiction literature, film, and television, you may wish to consider science fiction video and computer games. In addition to Mary Shelley's novel, you may wish to consider James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein monster movie (here) as well.

f) Which conventions (or "topoi" or "tropes") of the modern horror genre do we find present in Frankenstein? To what extent has Frankenstein shaped our expectations of that genre? In addition to horror literature, film, and television, you may wish to consider horror video and computer games. In addition to Mary Shelley's novel, you may wish to consider James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein monster movie (here) as well. 

g) In Frankenstein, to what extent does Mary Shelley blur the line between humanity and

monstrosity? How does she achieve this effect? What are her techniques? 

3. Essay #3 (Monday, June 16): "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" or Waiting for Godot

Please submit an approximately 1000-word essay on one of the following topics to kendall.shields@smu.ca by the end of the day (11:59PM) Monday, June 16. Please reread the "General Guidelines" at the top of this post and keep them in mind as you prepare this work. Some topics are rather focused, while others are more open-ended; where possible, my hope is that you will choose a topic relevant to your own interests and expertise.

Here are your options:

a) What is the relationship between the literary terms “soliloquy” and “dramatic monologue”? Explain with reference to "The Love Song of J. Alred Prufrock" and Hamlet.

b) What specific images does T. S. Eliot use to communicate the speaker's isolation and frustration in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"? Which of these images are most effective? Why?

c) How has T. S. Eliot's poetry influenced modern songwriters? Take the Dorian Lynskey article "I Will Show You Arcade Fire in A Handful of Dust: Why Pop Music Loves T. S. Eliot" as your starting point, and focus your attention on one particular song or songwriter. To what use does the song or songwriter you have chosen put Eliot's poetry? How is Eliot's influence felt? (Depending on which song/songwriter you choose, you may wish to read T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in addition to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Lynskey rightly describes The Waste Land as "unfathomably complex" but "easy to love regardless of whether you understand it.") Alternatively, you may wish to present a close reading and analysis of an unrelated song of your own choosing with reference to its use of poetic devices (metaphor, allusion, imagery, etc.). 

d) In a 1931 essay, Samuel Beckett wrote the following: "Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit. Breathing is habit. Life is habit. Rarely does one experience the moment when the boredom of living is replaced with the suffering of being.” Examine this quotation with reference to Waiting for Godot. 

e) Roseanne Barr once said about the television series Seinfeld, "They think they're doing Samuel Beckett instead of a sitcom." Examine the validity of this claim with reference to any episode(s) of the Seinfeld series. What is Barr talking about? What does it mean to "do" Samuel Beckett? Or, as Seinfeld himself might ask, "What is the deal with Beckett?" Episodes of Seinfeld can be found readily online, and are also available from me. One episode in particular you may wish to consider is "The Chinese Restaurant," which you can watch here. The script of that episode is available here.

f) Watching or reading Waiting for Godot is an encounter with the avant-garde. Let's have another. Why did John Cage write a piece of music (4'33") that contains no music, and why did a group of UK pop stars re-record it in 2010? Why did Cory Arcangel erase everything from Super Mario Bros. except for the clouds? Why did Christian Bök write a book of univocalic poetry (Eunoia, excerpted here and here), and why did it become a best seller? Why did Lady Gaga wear a meat dress? Why did the experimental hip hop/electronic group Death Grips get more attention for not playing a show than they ever received for playing one? This topic asks you to engage with experimental, avant-garde works of art. What are they trying to do? How do they go about doing it? To what extent do they succeed? Please remember that the above examples are merely suggestions; the possibilities here are almost endless, and I invite you to explore them.

4. Final Essay (Saturday, June 21): The Problem of Knowledge 

Please submit an approximately 1000-word essay on the following topic to kendall.shields@smu.ca by the end of the day (11:59PM) Saturday, June 21. Please reread the "General Guidelines" at the top of this post and keep them in mind as you prepare this work.

Here is your topic:

Consider what we have referred to this semester as “the problem of knowledge.” What do the texts we have read this semester have to say about this problem? In your answer, you are not required to address every text we have studied, but the best answers are likely to incorporate material from throughout the semester.

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Selected definitions you might find useful for some of the above essay options:

from M. H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms (7th ed.):

avant-garde: (a military metaphor: "advance-guard"); that is, a small, self-conscious group of artists and authors who deliberately undertake in Ezra Pound’s phrase, to "make it new." By violating the accepted conventions and proprieties, not only of art but of social discourse, they set out to create ever-new artistic forms and styles and to introduce hitherto neglected, and sometimes forbidden, subject matter. Frequently, avant-garde artists represent themselves as “alienated” from the established order, against which they assert their own autonomy; a prominent aim is to shock the sensibilities of the conventional reader and to challenge the norms and pieties of the dominant bourgeois culture.

convention: [...] conventions are conspicuous features of subject matter, form, or technique that occur repeatedly in works of literature. Conventions in this sense may be recurrent types of character, turns of plot, forms of versification, or kinds of diction and style.

from the Oxford English Dictionary:

topos (pl. topoi): A traditional motif or theme (in a literary composition); a rhetorical commonplace, a literary convention or formula.

trope: A significant or recurrent theme; a motif.