This is a take-home test. Choose ONE question from Section A and ONE question from Section B; for each one, write a coherent, lucid, interesting and concise essay of about 750 words (i.e., about three pages, if typed and double-spaced, though legible handwriting or printing is permissible). In order to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of your knowledge, in the course of your two essays you should offer substantive discussion of as many as you can of the works that we’ve encountered thus far (Lysistrata, The Girl from Andros, The Pot of Gold, The Miser, Twelfth Night, The Feign’d Courtesans, The Way of the World, and The Conscious Lovers). Please try to select questions sufficiently different from one another that you do not have to repeat yourself in the course of the two essays.
I encourage you to introduce test topics into our in-class or email discussions and/or to discuss potential responses to examination questions with other members of the class; similarly, I will be happy to talk or correspond with you about your tests in progress. If you wish, you may write drafts or detailed outlines for your essays as your weekly writing for the week of October 12 - 18. The test is due at the beginning of class (3:00 PM on Tuesday, October 26.
In writing your test essays, you can assume that your reader is familiar with the works about which you are writing. Still, you should point as specifically as you can to the evidence that you use in support of your thesis, and you would probably do well to quote directly from the text on occasion--both to add color and interest to the essay and to demonstrate your intimate familiarity with the works. This is especially true if you discuss the narration or style of the work. Quotations do not need full citations, but I will appreciate page numbers in parentheses (after the quotation marks and before the end punctuation) at the end of each quoted passage.
Given the relative brevity of these essays, your introductions are likely to be less elegant and eloquent than they might be in longer pieces. Each answer should have a strong, argumentative, and identifiable thesis, and that thesis should drive the rest of the essay. If you wish, you can use the thesis itself as the lead sentence for the essay. Your thesis should be informative (e.g., “Although Shakespeare had rescued young women characters from the silence so often imposed by the Roman comic playwrights, it was not until the Restoration, and specifically the plays of Aphra Behn, that women characters in comedies gave voice to what may be regarded as authentic female sentiments.”) rather than indicative (e.g.,”This essay will consider women characters in comedies beginning with the Greks and Romans and concluding in the eighteenth-century in England.”), i.e., the thesis should say something about the literature you are going to discuss rather than saying something about the essay you are writing.
Similarly, the essay’s ending should be characterized by something more than the exhaustion of the material to be discussed; draw a conclusion on the basis of the previous discussion or re-state your thesis in such a way that your reader now, having toured your analysis and evidence, understands it and accepts it. Do not turn the conclusion over to the reader or suggest that one’s understanding of the literature is all just a matter of personal opinion. Tell the reader what you think (and why) as forcefully as possible.
Section A
1. Consider Frye’s characterization of the alazon (an “imposter”) as characterized by “a lack of self-knowledge” rather than “simple hypocrisy” (172). Considering three or four examples of alazons, does Frye’s characterization give you insight into the characters? into the theme(s) of the plays in which they appear?
2. Consider the history of the eiron character (Frye 173-175) as revealed in the plays we’ve read. Can you make any generalizations about the character type of the early classical eiron? the modern eiron? and about how one evolved into the other?
3. Identify as many examples as you can of buffoon characters (bomolochoi) and “churls” (agroikos) (Frye 175-76). Which stock characters can be included in these larger categories? What do these characters add to the plays? Which examples seem to fit their categories best? Which characters seem to stretch or blur the categories?
4. Frye’s four categories of character types do not seem to encompass the Professionals (Doctors, Lawyers, Pedants) often found in comedies, but they are worth considering as well. Identify as many examples as you can. What are the common techniques in presenting and developing their characters? What do the characters add to the plays?
5. Congreve and others tend to credit Ben Jonson with the invention of the “humourous” character, but it might be possible to find the beginnings or the seeds of this type of character in earlier comedy. Identify as many humourous characters as you can in the plays that we’ve read, order them chronologically, and try to explain the history of the humourous character as represented by your examples.
6. Consider the history of the representation of women in comedy as found in the plays we’ve read thus far. What are the high and low points of this history?
Section 2
1. Consider Frye’s description of the “ternary” structure of comedy (163-172). Using three or more plays, describe how the analysis of these plays using the ternary structure as a guide helps to illuminate the plot and theme.
2. Compile the criticisms of as many of the philosophers, critics, and theoreticians we’ve encountered who display an ambivalent or antipathetic attitude toward(s) comedy. (Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes, Collier, and Addison would seem to be likely choices.) Using the plays we’ve read, find and explain as many examples as you can either to support their criticism(s) or to argue against them.
3. Frye suggests that the “happy” ending of comedy is more often social (i.e., socially happy) than moral. Using examples from the plays we’ve read, develop an argument in which you agree or disagree.
4. Abstracting from Bergson’s theory of laughter and the comic, we might say that comedy celebrates what he might call “elasticity” and “vitality.” Consider this hypothesis with examples from the plays we’ve read.
5. Romantic comic plots are surprisingly formulaic – or are they? Discuss the ways in which comedy may be said to tell the same story over and over again. Find examples in which playwrights complicate their plots or diverge from the formula. What is the effect of these complications or divergences?
6. The Conscious Lovers marks a turning point in English romantic comedy (which is based upon classical and French comedy). In what way(s) is Conscious Lovers significantly different from the comedies we’ve encountered earlier? What has been gained? What has been lost? (Consideration of Segal’s characterization of the origin(s) and nature of comedy might be useful here.)
Return to Brian Connery's Home Page