THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIODepartment of EnglishSummer 2000ENGLISH 200: READING CRITICISM READING LITERATUREEssay 1
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Due: July 28 in class Length: 1500-1700 words Value: 15% of your final grade Style Guide: MLA Handbook
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Instructions: Write a coherent and logically developed essay on one of the following topics. Remember: an essay is a rhetorical exercise, and thus you must include an argumentative thesis supported by evidence that seeks to persuade your reader. Familiarize yourself with the details of the MLA style, and make sure you include a Works Cited page that lists your primary texts, as well as all the sources you draw upon to mount your argument. I am not requiring you to use secondary material for this essay, but if you do so you must ensure that you cite these materials properly.
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Topics: 1. Drawing on details of the play to support your discussion, consider the role of the chorus in Oedipus Rex from the perspective of two of the following critical orientations: mimetic, rhetorical and formal. Which perspective is more useful and why?2. Select several examples of figurative language—such
as metaphors, similes and so on—from
Horace's Ars Poetica
or Plato's Ion and analyze how the use of such language supports or
undermines the arguments these texts advance about the nature, function and
value of literature. 3. Plato's texts often gender poetry as feminine. Why? What is the significance
of such a characterization? Drawing on details from Ion
and Republic X to support your argument, consider the role that gender
plays in his ideas. 4. Pope's An Essay on Criticism
presents—among other
issues—a concern with
poetry's proper relationship to nature. Pope's notion of mimesis, though, seems
at best complex and nuanced and at worst, contradictory. Discuss and evaluate
his conception of mimesis using examples from his text. 5. Both Horace and Sidney examine the importance of pleasure in the audience's
experience of poetry. Define, compare and contrast their notions of pleasure. 6. Sidney's Apology and Aristotle's scientific formalization of art are concerned with education, both of their own readers and of the audience of poetry and drama. Compare their views on the educative function of art and interpretation.
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