I've been feeling a bit unsure of my topic choice the last day or so. I'm really interested in talking about Shakespeare's eternal (?) influence on literature and how it compares to literature of today; specifically YA. But I'm struggling with specificity toward my personal play (I loved Measure for Measure too much to not have it be the play I do my research on). I did a little bit of extra digging today and found some really interesting articles about moral lessons in literature. I even found a podcast of one woman discussing moral lessons in literature and how she uses good literature to teach leadership skills. A lot of what I have been finding has been really intriguing, one article in particular about Measure for Measure, but it didn't seem to get specific enough either.
Wondering if anyone has some suggestions of a direction I could head in. I'll be talking to a couple other people in the next day or so too, hopefully I can find something to really focus in on.
Podcast link here
I would almost encourage you to take the opposite approach to figuring out what you want to write about. It seems like you're coming to the texts with some ill-defined ideas of what you want to explore, but that approach seems to be getting in your way. Maybe take a few hours to just go back to a play you enjoyed and read through the primary text and see what stands out to you. Right now, your ideas don't seem defined enough to explore, so see if you can't find inspiration a different way.
ReplyDeleteI would love to see something YA that channels Shakespeare but doesn't dumb it down. Maybe you could do something about how YA could be used to introduce Shakespeare better, or something. I'm not sure, I don't know YA very well, but I think there's something there.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nyssa. I think you should get back into the play. After doing that, I think you should ask yourself what moral do you get out of the play? What message is most important? If you had to share one theme or insight from this play, what would you want people to know the most? I think asking yourself those questions after reading might help.
ReplyDeleteSeconded; specifically, I recommend going back through and reading lines from a character you found compelling, or re-reading a scene you liked. Doing so helped me focus my topic much better.
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