WRTG 3020, sec. 076, KING LEAR AND GREEK TRAGEDY, Fall Semester 2008
Instructor: Joan (Lord) Hall
Class meets, TR 11 – 12.30 in University Club 10
Course office hours and contact information:
TR, 10 – 10.50, 2 – 2.50, and by appointment, in TB1, Room 9 (Temporary Building 1 is next to Clare Small, near the Rec Center). Office phone/voice mail: 303 492 3821
My mailbox is in TB1 (to the left of the main entrance).
Email: (please use this rather than the colorado.edu address)
Home phone (to leave urgent messages when I am not in the office): 303 443 9717
Required texts:
Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles (Penguin, 1984)
William Shakespeare, King Lear (Signet edition, ed., Russell Fraser, 1998)
For discourse analysis: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (W.W. Norton, 2006)
Other critical essays will be supplied, plus excerpts from texts that treat rhetoric and rhetorical theory: Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz, Everything’s an Argument (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001); and Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Recommended text: Diane Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual (Bedford/St.Martin’s, 5th ed.), or an equivalent manual, such as LBBrief ( Pearson/Longman, 2008) so that you can check on questions of grammar, style, citation, etc.
Online resources for writing conventions:
The Purdue University Owl (on-line writing lab): http://owl.english.purdue/owl/owl/
The Colorado State University Writing Center: http://writing.colostate.edu
You can watch, or purchase from Norlin library the BBC version of King Lear (1981). We will review excerpts from other filmed versions.
Course Overview
WRTG 3020 is open to Juniors and Seniors in the College of Arts and Sciences. The broad aim of the course is to sharpen your critical thinking and critical writing skills—to help you to communicate more clearly, gracefully, and persuasively. To this end, the course focuses on rhetorical forms and persuasive strategies (particularly analysis and argument) that you will use in academia and the workplace; it emphasizes the relationship between writer, reader, subject, and purpose in the formation of a text.
In this section of 3020, “King Lear and Greek Tragedy,” we engage in close reading of dramatic texts to build convincing analysis and argument papers, which means that you are writing within the specific discipline of literary studies. But your immediate discourse community consists of your class-mates who, majoring in different disciplines and with varying interests and levels of knowledge, provide an audience and context beyond that of literary criticism alone.
The class will be conducted both as a forum for discussion of readings and as a workshop where students receive constructive criticism on their work in progress, either from the whole class or within smaller peer groups.
CCHE criteria and how they reflect course objectives
Below are the key criteria for an upper-division core writing course, as specified by the Colorado Commission of Higher education, with explanations on how this course addresses them:
Extend Rhetorical Understanding. WRTG 3020 advances your rhetorical knowledge and awareness. This applies both to how you approach the dramatic texts and how you write about them. In reading the plays you not only analyze how they work in the theater and as literature—through their dramatic structure, use of language, development of character and themes—but also how these tragedies are rhetorically designed to appeal to particular audiences. As a case in point: in his Poetics, Aristotle stresses that the action of a tragedy should generate “pity and “fear.” We will define what this mean for us a twenty-first century audience (and for the original ancient Greek audience) and evaluate how successfully each tragedy elicits these emotions. How does the playwright draw in or distance the audience from the main protagonists as they move toward tragic downfall, self-discovery, and suffering? We may also consider other theories of tragedy, ranging from Hegel’s to Arthur Miller’s.
Your own critical writing on these plays will alert you to rhetorical choices you can make to communicate your ideas to your audience—how, for instance, you might develop your thesis by making appeals to pathos, ethos, and logos, and how, using the Toulmin model, you can best support your claims with valid reasons, sound underlying assumptions, and convincing evidence.
Gain Experience in the Writing Process. This course offers an opportunity to improve writing through multiple drafts that respond to the perspectives of other readers. As well as revising your work by considering the class’s and the instructor’s suggestions, you are encouraged to seek feedback and expert help from the Writing Center. This will confirm that writing is a collaborative enterprise. It is also a process that takes advantage of current technologies: exchanging work and consulting on writing via e-mail, as well as accessing research resources through the Internet. The class also utilizes video materials, ranging from watching excerpts from the plays in performance (and then writing short critiques on them) to receiving further instruction in the editing process from a video such as Richard Lanham, “Revising Prose.”
Master Writing Conventions. By now you should have mastered the conventions of grammar and punctuation; this course enables you to hone those skills. On a more advanced level, you will reflect on how to use style, tone, and diction appropriate to your audience (discourse community) and gain practice in documenting your evidence correctly.
Demonstrate advanced comprehension of content within a specific discipline. To communicate your insights into the dramatic texts, you will learn to use specialized terms from literary theory and literary criticism. Discussing essays of scholars who have published on King Lear (e.g. those of A. C. Bradley, J. Stampfer, and Coppelia Kahn) will acquaint you with different critical approaches to the plays and ways of writing about them. As you frame questions and develop theses for analysis and argument, you may choose to extend beyond the discourse community of students of literature, developing your topic along cross-cultural or interdisciplinary lines. For instance, if you are majoring in sociology, history, or even economics, you will be encouraged to write on a topic arising from the plays that draws on the knowledge and terminology of that discipline but that can still communicate successfully to a non-expert audience.
Assignments and Assessment
About one-third of your grade comes from shorter assignments—written responses to the text and to critical essays on the plays—and from peer reviews and class participation.
One third of your grade is the analysis paper, a 5-10 page essay. This can either develop a literary interpretation of Oedipus the King and King Lear or can select a topic that analyzes the plays through a different discipline, e.g. historical, psychological, sociological, or feminist perspectives.
The remaining third of the grade is the 5-10 page argument paper, which takes into account other critical commentaries (some essays from the Signet edition, others to be supplied) to construct a rhetorically convincing argument on King Lear that will incorporate and address counterarguments as part of its strategy.
How the Class Will Be Conducted and Class Policies
In order to build a writing community in the class, regular attendance and active class participation are crucial. Please regard attendance as mandatory. You are allowed three absences, for whatever reason, before your grade will be penalized. Use them wisely: e. g. for illness or family emergencies. If you must miss class because of an extended illness, you will need to show me medical evidence for your absence. Since coming in late is distracting to the class, tardiness is not acceptable, so be sure to make your class copies well ahead of time.
During the weeks when we conduct the class as a workshop, we’ll arrange whose work is to be discussed on Tuesdays and who will present on Thursdays. That will allow for some careful critiquing of others’ work ahead of time. If your work is to be discussed on Tuesday, please e-mail me a copy by Monday, late afternoon (to ) and bring copies to class. If your work is to be discussed on Thursday, please also bring copies to class on Tuesday to be distributed in advance.
Attached to the syllabus is important information about the honor code, classroom behavior, and allowance for religious observances. Check carefully the potentially severe penalties for plagiarism (stealing or accepting work from another student or from another source), as specified by the honor code, which this class will follow. Students who need special academic accommodations should see me with a letter as soon as possible. You can contact the relevant services in Willard 322, at 303-492-8641, or access www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices.
I encourage you to consult with me in my regular office hours (or by arrangement) and to visit the Writing Center.
Provisional course schedule
Week I (Aug 26 -28)
Introduction to the course (Aug 26) and discussion of Oedipus the King (Aug 28); worksheet provided.
Aug 28: Hand in answer (1-2 pages) to a question on the worksheet, section A.
Week 2 (Sept 2 - 4)
Sept 2: Continue discussion of Oedipus the King, relating it to Aristotle’s definitions of tragedy in particular.
Sept 4: Discussion; in-class writing; preparation for critical interpretation assignment. Hand in answer (1-2 pages) to a question on the worksheet, section B.
Week 3 (Sept 9-11): Workshop assignment on critical interpretation of Oedipus the King. As part of this, we’ll consider essays by Bernard Knox (intro to the text) and Robert Cohen, “”Oedipus and the Absurd Life,” to be supplied.
Weeks 4 - 5 (Sept 16 -25)
Class discussion of King Lear, with some in-class writing.
Sept 16: Hand in 1-2 page answer to one question on the King Lear worksheet
Sept 18: Hand in the revised version of Week 3’s assignment on Oedipus the King, along with your original version, for a grade.
Sept 23: Short assignment on King Lear due (topic to be provided).
Week 6 (Sept 30 – Oct 2)
Workshop assignment on a question that analyzes King Lear in relation to Oedipus the King (handout to be supplied).
Weeks 7 - 10 (Oct 7 - 30)
Workshop the first paper (ANALYSIS). Beginning with the opening paragraph, work on your own analysis (an interpretation that evolves a strong thesis) of a particular issue arising from the two plays we have studied. This can develop a topic along literary/rhetorical/thematic lines; e.g. the question of the heroes’ moral responsibility for their downfalls; the question of how far the “gods” (or the cosmos) influences the action of each play; the roles of the female characters in the two plays; whether the “downfall’ of each main protagonist generates “pity” and “fear” in the audience/reader; or how the question of kingship is explored in one or both of the plays. Alternatively, you can choose a topic relating to another discipline, such as psychology, sociology, or gender studies. Essays on King Lear to be considered in this light include William C. Carroll, “’The Base Shall Top Th’ Legitimate”: The Bedlam Beggar and the Role of Edgar in King Lear,” and Coppelia Kahn, “The Absent Mother in King Lear.”
Readings: From They Say, I Say, Chapter 7, “So What? Who Cares?: Saying Why It Matters” and Chapter 8, “As A Result: Connecting the Parts”
Oct 9: Hand in the revised version of your response to Week 6's assignment, along with your original version, for a grade.
Weeks 7 - 8: Full class workshop of opening paragraphs and the first part of the analysis paper.
Weeks 9 -10 More reflective practices: Peer workshopping in small groups; developing written critiques on the essays in progress; editing and reflecting on full drafts.
Week 11 (Nov 4 -6):
Discussion of rhetorical strategies for constructing arguments and, more specifically, arguments on literature topics. We’ll workshop an assignment that argues for or against claims made in two contrasting essays on similar topics, such as A. C. Bradley’s essay from Shakesperean Tragedy, in the Signet edition of King Lear, juxtaposed with J. Stampfer’s “The Catharsis of King Lear”; or Cristina Leon Alfar’s essay, “King Lear’s Immoral Daughters” set against Kate McCluskie’s “The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare.”
November 6: Hand in final draft of the analysis paper.
Weeks 12 - 16 (November 11 – Dec 12)
Nov 13: Hand in your revised version of Week 11's assignment, together with the original version.
Workshop the second paper (ARGUMENT). Choose a controversial topic and develop your own argumentative thesis on the play, being sure to address counterarguments. You can choose an argumentative topic that spans both plays or concentrate exclusively on King Lear. Some topics to consider, based on the essays we’re reading might be: whether or not King Lear is anti-feminist, ultimately reinforcing traditional stereotypes about women; how far Shakespeare’s play projects an absurd universe; or whether Lear becomes a more sympathetic tragic hero than Oedipus.
Readings: From They Say, I Say: Focus on Chapter 4, “Yes/No/Okay, But”: Three Ways to Respond, and Chapter 5, “And Yet”: Distinguishing What You Say From What They Say”; from Everything’s an Argument, Chapter 2, “Reading and Writing Arguments”
Weeks 12 - 14: Full class workshop of opening paragraphs and the first part of the argument paper.
Weeks 15 -16: Reflective practices: Peer workshopping in small groups; developing written critiques on the essays in progress; editing and reflecting on full drafts.
This argument paper replaces a final exam; it must be handed in by or before noon on Monday, December 15.
Note: As you revise and add to your longer papers, please attach the immediately preceding draft to the copy of the new version that you give to me.
1