Story of my paper

The story of my paper all began on a boring, run of the mill, Saturday night. My wife and I were just hanging out and decided to watch a movie at home. This naturally lead us into the Netflix trap. After spending a sizable amount of time just trying to choose a movie we both could agree on we finally settled on a little known Shakespeare adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler. After watching this adaptation of Coriolanus I became really intrigued.  The movie was so great I couldn't figure out why this particular Shakespeare play didn't receive as much attention as the others.  Because of this, and my own unfamiliarity with the play, I decided it would be a fun and interesting play to research.

After deciding on my play I really didn't have any idea what particular aspect I wanted to research. Initially, I thought looking into and breaking down the theme of 'exile' but that idea fizzled out pretty fast. Struggling with research ideas actually turned out to be a really helpful process because it caused me to really read between the lines of the primary text. Coriolanus was always on my mind. I was constantly trying to correlate the play to whatever it was I was occupying myself with. Eventually this payed off one night as I was watching T.V. and John Hughes' classic "The Breakfast Club" came on. All of the sudden the lessons I had taken from Coriolanus were being reflected back at me through the character of Andrew. My Breakfast club post goes into greater detail about these ideas. I began to get great feed back from the class about these parallels and I began to explore Coriolanus as the basis of T.V. tropes. I didn't end up following through with these ideas very long as I became more interested in the Nature vs. Nurture aspects of the play.

As I looked at what was causing me to draw comparisons of Coriolanus and other popular T.V. and movie character I found that it was similar nurturing factors in their characters that drew me to them.  As I did more research of the primary text as well as outside research I found that there was a lot of material to support my claim that the tragedy of Coriolanus was the fault of the peoples cultivation of his pride. However, the more I researched the more I felt that my idea was lacking something. Getting some great feedback from Lauren R. and Britton and a meeting from Professor Burton helped me to refine my ideas one last time.  Through their outside perspective I was able to direct my paper more towards the innovations that Shakespeare was doing with the genre of tragedy. Bringing in my research on Nature vs. Nurture as well as applying Aristotle's definition of tragedy. I argued that Shakespeare was transcending the classic ideals of tragedy being defined within the individual by applying the tragedy to society as a whole.

I really appreciated the way this class was set up and how it facilitated the refinement of my paper. Though I didn't have any great enlightening experiences with social media I did have some great enlightening moments with many of my fellow class mates and I feel that made all the difference with the way my paper turned out.

Having Second Thoughts

I've started working on the actual paper. It's coming slowly. I've been focusing on the legitimacy part of my thesis, that is:

The legitimacy of characters in Shakespeare is fixed by birth but is subject to change because of frustration with one's own label of legitimacy and a desire to take advantage of others with more or less secure legitimacy, as was the case in the Tudor period. 

Me being a very verbose writer and making long, extensive quotes, I am almost up to six pages. I'm starting to wonder if I could save myself the trouble of writing [extensively?] about my other two topics, ambition and family relations and focus solely on the legitimacy issue. I could get away with it, at the rate I'm going.

 I feel like if I did that I would be making less of an argument. I want to argue that the events of the Tudor dynasty not only influenced Shakespeare's politics but his literary themes in general. You could argue that politics and thematics are one and the same in Shakespeare, but I don't think so. I think that I could make a case for Shakespeare using "Tudor" themes without him making please-patron-only political statements. I want to say, "This is propaganda, but it's still art because..." The original audience would have understood that the Tudors did the exact same horrible things to each other? These are the forces shaping Shakespeare's plays because they are shaping his world? I think I'm on to something. I just need to know how to argue it.

The Writing Process: Looking to Ian McArthur for Assurance

Though many people's posts show a great arc in paper development, I am especially intrigued and assured by Ian McArthur's story. I always worry with my paper ideas about how interesting my topic is to other people and whether it's true to my scholarly needs as well. Seeing Ian switch from a paper about Iago and the Joker to a paper ruminating on what makes Iago a villain was comforting--he went from a topic that appealed to people because of pop culture and topicality to one that appealed to people because of its universality.

Also, his post kind of got me excited about the potential paper I could write on Emilia, and it seems like Ian would be a good person to talk to in my own writing process. I would love to talk with him about Iago and then how that would affect Emilia's role in the play, considering she's married to someone who is supposedly an idealistic villain.

The Birth of a Paper

My idea for my paper about teaching Shakespeare from a rhetorical approach started because of the individual play I chose to read, Julius Caesar.

The Story of My Research Paper

In the beginning of my writing process, I knew that Troilus and Cressida was a story about lovers, so I wanted to explore the idea of love and the ancient Greek culture. However, I realized that the play was about jilted love--and in most people's opinions (according to Goodreads and Twitter), very depressing. It was helpful to get an opinion of what the general public though of the play because it helped me come up with my final idea. In my first post, I had several theses, but I was intrigued that Troilus and Cressida was an "anti-tragedy." In these preliminary stages, I had some trouble finding adequate sources, but as I explored the Twittersphere, I gained a clearer understanding of "anti-tragedy." In my preliminary draft, I spent too much time proving that the play wasn't a tragedy and not enough time explaining the implications. The feedback I received from fellow students was helpful, and my video post also defined my argument. As I wrote my paper, I realized that Troilus and Cressida not only resists tragedy, but of all genres. I tried to make my paper scholarly because I wanted to submit it to several publications. Knowing that my paper was going public helped me produce a final product that I would (almost) be comfortable submitting to Criterion. However, as I have revised my paper, I have come to an even greater understanding of my topic and of the play. Writing my paper has been a journey enriched by multiple social circles.