Instructions:  Each student is required to write a one-page response at the end of each section of the course to the following questions.  You should keep the question in mind throughout our period of study of each book:  jot down some notes and ideas throughout the section, think about the question and its implications.  Then write your response at the end of our time of study, and save your response as an HTML file (titled question1, question2, question 3, etc.) in your personal web folder for the course.
 

Section I
Love as Tragedy:  Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Consider the following statement about this play by Shakespeare scholar Joseph Bryant:

"Shakespeare's real miracle . . . was Juliet, transformed from an adolescent arrogantly eager to outdo her elders to an appealing child-woman, barely fourteen, who learns to mix courage with her innocence, yet falls victim to a world that only briefly and unintentionally but fatally treats her as a plaything."

How is Juliet so "transformed"?  Is she the most courageous of the play's characters?  Does she maintain her innocence?  And how, or why, does she fall victim to the world?

Section II
The Girl's Story:  Austen's Pride and Prejudice

At the heart of this novel's concerns is, clearly, the whole motif of the home and all it contains:  husband and wife, marriage, children, love, economic security . . . and much else besides.  Does Austen present her "ideal" of the home in the two concluding couples, Elinor and Edward and Marianne and Col. Brandon?  Or is something still missing at the conclusion?  Put differently, do you feel by the novel's end as if Austen has expressed her main desire?  Or has she, instead, suggested what is missing in human relationships?

Section III
Love as Comedy:  Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Among the many things that this deceptively complex play is about is the nature of change, or transformation--what Shakespeare's source poet, Ovid, calls metamorphosis.  Shakespeare scholar C.L. Barber discusses this element of the play as follows:

"The teeming metamorphoses which we encounter are placed . . . in a medium and in a moment where the perceived structure of the outer world breaks down, where the body and its environment interpenetrate in unaccustomed ways, so that the seeming separateness and stability of identity is lost."

The question to respond to, then, is this:  how does transformation relate to identity in this play?

Section IV
The Boy's Story:  Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

The great central story in Go Down, Moses is "The Bear," what one critic has described as perhaps Faulkner's single finest piece of writing.  But "The Bear" is framed by two shorter, related stories:  "The Old People" and "Delta Autumn."  Many would argue that "The Bear" cannot be understood properly without understanding these two framing stories.  For your guiding question on this unit, think about the ways in which "The Old People" and "Delta Autumn" alter our understanding of "The Bear."

This is, of course, a massive question, and I would like you to respond to it in the following way:  isolate a single idea that expresses your sense of what the two framing stories contribute to the main story; then devote one paragraph to explaining that idea in "The Old People," and one paragraph explaining that idea in "Delta Autumn."  (You may still compose an introductory paragraph and a concluding paragraph as well, though this is not necessary.)
 
 

Section V
The Cosmic View:  The Poetry and Images of William Blake

Below are three famous pronouncements by William Blake.  Choose one of these quotes that you find particularly provocative.  Then, using one poem from the Songs of Innocence and Experience and one from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, discuss what you think Blake means by this quote in terms of his own poetry.

          "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."

          "To create a little flower is the labour of ages."

          "Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."