Hello, my name is the Oracle

I figured as I was going back to look at the primary text that it would be important to find out more about the oracle in The Winter's Tale, as the oracle is a pretty obvious part of the supernaturalness of the play.

A servant comes in during Act II, scene 3, to tell Leontes that his friends had come back with news from the oracle he'd asked about his wife's, Hermione's, fidelity.  Leontes says:

'Twenty-three days / They have been absent, 'tis good speed; foretells / The great Apollo suddenly will have / The truth of this appear. Prepare you, lords, / Summon a session, that we may arraign / Our most disloyal lady; for as she hath / Been publicly accused, so shall she have / A just and open trial. / While she lives, / My heart will be a burden to me. Leave me, / And think upon my bidding."

Outlets for Student Research

While blogging is an informal outlet for student research, there are more formal ways to present or publish such writing. Consider these categories:

1. Academic Archives
2. Academic Conferences
3. Academic Journals
4. Academic Blogging

Fangirl Update.

Can I just say how excited I am to do this paper? Never in a million years did I think I'd be writing about reality TV and Shakespeare, but here I am, browsing through twitter pages, trying to find something that will work. Maybe it would help if I picked a legitimate thesis rather than just an idea. 

Do you think I can get him to come to my house to interview him?

I've been bouncing two different ideas around in my head all week, and I've still yet to finalize which will be the focus of my paper. The couple people I've shared the ideas with haven't been much help, but Professor Burton was able to help me at least cut it down to two:

1. The suspension of disbelief in both Shakespeare and Reality TV.  For Shakespeare he tends to break the fourth wall, frame plays in outside stories, etc. to remind the audience that they're watching the play. Reality TV likes to remind its viewers that they're watching "real" events and emotions. Shakespeare's process makes the plays seem more real, while Reality TV saying "this is real" makes it seem fake. How would Reality TV maybe showing sets/camera people/behind the scenes maybe change the way we view it?

2. Reality TV relies a lot on the use of Stock characters. Maybe something to prove that Reality TV has it's roots in comedia dell'arte, but I'd need to find significance in making this claim.

What do you guys think? Personally, I'm leaning more towards the suspension of disbelief on because this idea is intriguing.

Something to Chew On

The funny thing about my topic is not only do you have a right to say the word "bastard" regularly but you also have to think about "bastards" a lot. Particularly Shakespeare's "bastards" and so-called "bastards." I've been thinking about Edmund in particular. Whereas the Bastard in King John is depicted as sort of a hero and the illegitimized children in Richard III and The Winter's tale are innocent, Edmund lives up to his connotation. Why?

At first I was thinking that Shakespeare changed/evolved his views with the times. With the supposedly illegitimate Elizabeth dying and later being replaced by James, Shakespeare became more liberal with how he depicted people of questionable birth, since King Lear was written after Elizabeth's death and King John written just before. But after double-checking the chronology of these plays, I realized maybe that didn't make sense.

Then I followed a link on Shakespeare Online from a survey of top villains to an in-depth article about Edmund, and something struck me: it wasn't Edmund's birth that made him a villain (I already agreed with that, but I was wondering if Shakespeare did) but it was his pride and ambition. This fits much better with my topic. The Tudor dynasty was marked by contention because a lot of people with big plans for personal advancement (similar to Edmund) got involved in the Tudor drama and tried to take advantage of what was happening. For instance, Anne Boylen and Katherine Howard both came from ambitious families. And Shakespeare had an apparent distaste for social climbers and showed it in his plays through characters like Edmund and Oswald. Anyway, food for thought I am currently munching on--nom nom nom!

Annotated Bibliography In Progress

Annotated Bibliography

Please note that I am still looking for a lot of sources and consider this bibliography to be "in progress." 

Working Thesis:

Shakespeare's concerns with legitimacy, unnatural family ties, ambition, and other themes as they appear in several of his plays demonstrates a concern for the causes of instability during the Tudor dynasty.

Social Graph and New Media:

I am very behind in these sections because I am having a hard time finding people to talk to about my thesis and I have not yet turned my attention to new media.

Social Networks:

 I have found a "Tudor History Lovers" group on Goodreads and I've posted my ideas there.

Scholarly Resources:
Reference

•  Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare Online. 1999. Web. I have not explored this website fully, but from what I can tell it's a source on all things Shakespeare and his life and times. This site will be useful for understanding what Shakespeare, his audiences, and his patrons were concerned with and how his plays were constructed thematically.

• Dobson, Michael, and Stanley Wells, ed. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press. 2001. Web.  This is not a very detailed site, but it has basic information about the plays, the characters, and some of the historical context. I plan to use this site for summary information about when the plays were written, what the major thematic elements are, and use that information as a springboard into deeper research.
• Burton, Gideon. Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric. Brigham Young University. Web. This website gives definitions for the usage of rhetorical terms, sometimes with examples. I am using the Rhetoric website for references to specific types of rhetoric used in the primary texts. 

Articles

•  Hunt, Maurice. "Shakespeare's King Richard III And The Problematics Of Tudor Bastardy." Papers On Language & Literature 33.2 (1997): 115. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Mar. 2013. This article describes the issues of legitimacy and illegitimacy in Richard III and how these were an actual reflection of the Tudor's preoccupation with legitimacy, and it also includes a summary of how this issue appears in other plays. This article evidences my idea that issues of relevance to the Tudors were thematically important in Shakespeare's works, specifically legitimacy, and while Shakespeare's depiction of it was meant to show the Tudors in a good light it also showed how problematic the issue was regardless of political leanings.
•  Lane, Robert. ""the Sequence of Posterity": Shakespeare's King John and the Succession Controversy." Studies in Philology 92.4 (1995): 460-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2013. Robert Lane argues that King John was Shakespeare's oblique approach to discussing the succession during Queen Elizabeth's reign. This article is a good source for understanding the historical context of the play not just as context but as actual people and events shaping the play itself.
• Ozzie, J. Mayers, et al. "King Lear and Fathering: A Panel Discussion." Journal of Men's Studies 6.1 (1997): 103,114,120-121. GenderWatch; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 6 Mar. 2013.This article is a panel discussion of a group of fathers after watching a performance of King Lear. This is not only a good resource for understanding King Lear but also a good analysis of family ties and parenting that I think can apply to the family dysfunctionality of the Tudors.
   

What was that all about?

So today I actually read the play Henry VIII. To paraphrase, the Prolouge states, "This is a sad play, prepare to cry." OK. It begins with the Duke of Buckingham's arrest for treason on charges of wanting to overthrow the king (oddly enough, he tells us later, he's the son of the same Buckingham in Richard III and wants us to notice the parallel). Then it goes into the crisis over Henry wanting to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boylen (in it's native English spelling Bullen in my text). There is a big trial, but before it even starts Katherine makes a big scene and leaves. Some of the events, like in The Winter's Tale, are described but not actually shown, and there are a lot of official processions. Katherine is depicted as a weak but virtuous and obedient woman, and Anne is only shown three times and is depicted as completely innocent of any ambition. The focus is on Cardinal Wolsey's fall because he supported Henry's divorce but did NOT want him to marry Anne, and after being forced to surrender his seal of office he gives a long "Oh Woe is Me" soliloquy and acts repentant. His death is described to the dying Katherine. Act V jumps ahead to Cramner, the archbishop of Canterbury, being tried by a council for teaching heresy, but then the King coming in to pardon him. The last scene is Henry greeting Baby Elizabeth after her christening.

I have no idea at the moment what Shakespeare is trying to say by this. All I know is it's very glossy over the actual history, a lot of the events are mashed together, and it was written about the time Elizabeth I died. I am not sure what this will have to do with my thesis. We'll see!

The altruistic scholar

Kara V publicly thanked those whose
feedback kept her from a wild goose chase

I want my students to realize how energizing and interesting it is to do research and reading -- for others.

Writing an academic research paper is typically lonely, and often feels like drudgery. Wouldn't be cool if, out of the blue, someone came to you with a great source that really supports your thesis or advances your thinking? And then -- think about it -- once you'd received that help, wouldn't you feel a bit more serious about your project?

So, go ahead and give that very experience to someone else. Call it karma, call it whatever, but see how very efficient and enjoyable it is to be an altruistic scholar.

What, you don't have time? You can only budget time for yourself and your own heavy load? First, you don't realize how much a very little goes a long way, and you may not yet have faith that such other-oriented thinking results in tangible benefits to you.

But have some faith, take some chances. I find that when I take chances on people, the way that parents and many others have taken chances on me, I rarely regret such reaching out. Think I'm giving a Sunday School lesson? Think whatever you like. But all I know is that it works.

A Quick Example
Let me model to you my own process for doing this by showing you how simple it was to help someone else out.

I'VE FOUND THEM!

So I followed Dr. Burton's advice to look for social forums on the internet related to my topics. On Goodreads, I found a forum devoted specifically to the Tudors and readers of both history books about them and historical fiction inspired by them. I have joined the group and posted my theory about the Winter's Tale being a parallel to Anne Boylen's fall. I'm so excited! Will keep you posted!

Royal Pains, Family Pains

I've been doing some reading up on King Lear and its critical interpretations about family and monarchy. The ONE good article I have so far is a transcript of a panel discussion between several fathers who have just watched a stage production of King Lear and are discussing its implications about fatherhood from their own personal experience. They commented a lot about what kind of relationship Lear had with his daughters and what he expected from them, and they noted the absence of the princesses' mother.

This made me think about my idea about the Tudors. What kind of a father was Henry VIII to his children? From the numerous books I have read about the Tudors I have come to several conclusions. The facts are that they were raised away from him for the most part, and the mothers of both of his daughters were estranged from Henry before their untimely deaths, so they probably were not very close. Edward is usually depicted as a somewhat spoiled favorite, partly because he was the male heir Henry had always wanted, and I can imagine that Jane Seymour's good sense to die before Henry could find anything wrong with her helped a lot. I can see Henry being the same kind of father-figure that the men in the panel discussion saw King Lear was to his daughters: imperious and demanding respect. And for much of their lives they lacked the presence of a mother figure.

It is not hard to imagine how this kind of childhood would have affected the rest of their lives. Elizabeth, of course, never married. Mary was married to Phillip II of Spain and was determined to produce an heir, but she was years older than him and he was never very close to her and cheated on her. Mary also hated Elizabeth because their father had dumped her mother Katherine  of Aragon for Elizabeth's mother Anne Boylen. Mary exiled Elizabeth to run-down estates in distant parts of England, perhaps as revenge because Henry had done the same thing to Mary's mother and this ill-treatment resulted in her death.

It kind of makes you think about how difficult it is to be a monarch or a member of a monarch's family. Natural family ties are corrupted as parents and children are divided into different court factions competing for power, and siblings and parents end up hurting and betraying each other, sometimes killing one another. Although Elizabeth and Philip II were rivals and Phillip wanted to invade England, the mind-blowing fact that he was technically her brother-in-law makes you wonder what would drive him to do it. Is there more to family than blood or marriage ties?

There's got to be something good in here...

Going back through Digital dialogue posts, I found that I was drawn to ideas concerning the historical context and the social customs and conventions of Shakespeare's day. I hadn't really thought much about historical context in ideas, but this makes me want to do more research on the interests that I have right now.

I also really enjoyed the discussion we had in class on Friday, and I'm excited at the personal applications that I've been finding and how they can translate into paper ideas. In Much Ado About Nothing, deception is a key theme that I talked a lot about with Amelia in class, and I definitely want to pursue it. I also had to watch a PBS video for my British Lit class, which discussed the deception and and cross-dressing in As You Like It. I would really like to compare the differences in deception in these two plays. As well as perhaps, look at the faked deaths in Much Ado and The Winter's Tale. These are some of the ideas that are coming to me right now. But I think that I need to do more research into the historical context, for instance about gender roles and cross-dressing, in order to really find something I'm invested in. 

Research Unit Overview / Calendar

Today is March 1, 2013, and my current Shakespeare students are embarking upon the last six weeks of our semester. They have read many works by Shakespeare and have done self-directed learning and a lot of online writing within a private online forum in our learning management system. From here on out, however, they will become more public in their conversation as they interact with one another and with those beyond our class in proposing and refining their research questions, then developing and publishing their formal research papers.

Blogging

Each student will post three times weekly to this, our course blog, and will also post comments in response to at least two other students' posts. But the goal here is not simply to produce writing. The blogging is a vehicle to meet the larger goals.

Goals

As I explained to my students in class today, the goal is not simply to produce a high-quality academic research paper. The goal is to find and develop a topic about which they care, and about which others demonstrate interest. This requires both reflection and interaction.

Along the way, the goal is to develop improved abilities at conducting research and using online writing and networking. This includes consulting traditional sources of literary criticism, but it also includes researching by way of new media and by tapping into social networks and online communities where the topics in question are being discussed. The online tools (including blogging and some video production) are not ends in themselves; they are to improve student ability at clarifying and refining their arguments, and improving communication and collaboration skills within the drafting and beta states of knowledge (rather than focusing everything upon a final, finished academic product alone).

Rather than simply listing detailed assignments for each class period, I would like my students to have an overview of the process in terms of these goals, which I will recast as questions:

The Story of Gabe's Research Paper

Rebellion--it took a while to choose it as the topic of my research paper. When I thought out my three ideas for theses, or 'protopapers', I was thinking of going a fairly classic analytic route concerning Hal's change. I really didn't like the idea of taking on a well-known theme in a play. Dr. Burton lent me a book that had Henry IV, Part 1 with extra texts and contexts; I had recorded accounts to give me more info about the historical side of Henry IV, his son Hal, and Richard II. I was interested in an account that suggested that Hal's time away from the court and his princely duties was fueled by Hal's disapproval of his father's methods in dealing with Richard II.

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.

Story of My Research Paper

This research paper has been a process definitely. :) I chose to research Othello because it is a play that is commonly taught in high schools. Since I am planning on teaching in high schools, it seemed like a natural fit. As I started to research, my ideas were very basic. I was dealing with the themes of the text, but it wasn't anything extraordinary. My updated "proto papers" lacked "pizzazz."

This is when social proof became very applicable (read my post about social proof here), and one thing that an old English professor said really struck me. She talked about Shakespeare as a great psychologist. Then Ian made a comment on one of my blog posts that encouraged me to address the needs of my students through Shakespeare. 

I started thinking that the characters in Othello go through similar situations (although to varying degrees) as high school students, and so I started to explore psychology as an avenue to Shakespeare. This was something that I was a little nervous about at first, because I have a very limited knowledge of Shakespeare, but it became very exciting. 

I went through all the normal stages of revision, a working draft, realizing that I needed more critical sources, and lots of edits. Then I arrived at what I thought was a work of art. When I met with Dr. Burton, he alerted me to some flaws in my paper that needed to be fixed. "Fixing some major flaws" turned into cutting over three pages of my paper. I realized that I was trying to address too many things at once, and so I focused my thinking and ended up with a much better paper. 

I am planning to submit my work to an Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference. I was in contact with the organizers a few weeks ago, and I am planning to do some follow-up with them and get my paper submitted. And like the rest of the class I will be submitting my paper to BYU's Scholar's Archive.

Learning Outcomes

Gain Shakespeare Literacy
I think the class structure contributed to gaining a breadth of knowledge. The plays we read as a class were good, and I think it was a good idea to have each member of our class read a different play for the research unit. Although I wouldn't consider myself an expert on each of the plays my classmates read, I have definitely been exposed to more than I previously had been, and I have an interest in furthering my study through more extensive reading. The research paper helped me reach a greater depth of understanding of Othello, and see its value in multiple venues (just for pleasure reading for educators, for psychology, for students, etc.). I appreciated being able to watch multiple films during the course of the semester, because I think that I understand plays more easily when I am seeing them. This class also gave me an opportunity to view other adaptations of plays I had previously seen. The large focus on digital literacy has also helped me to see the huge impact that Shakespeare has had on popular culture. It was fun to see Shakespeare references appearing on Facebook once I started looking for them. His influence is everywhere!

Analyze Shakespeare Critically
I think the research paper obviously was meant to address this Learning Outcome, and I feel like it fulfilled its purpose doing that. My research paper helped me look at major themes in terms of my English Education major, which was something I have never done before, but I think it was applicable and useful for me. It also allowed me to look at criticism in other fields that can be applied to Shakespeare.
I also think the film adaptations we watched helped. I have been asked to do a film analysis on a play in previous classes, but it was helpful to receive specific guidelines on what to look for when analyzing film.

Improvements in Researching A Midsummer Night's Dream

What has been working:
I've had a ton of helpful feedback through social media.
I've been able to speak personally to people involved/interested in the research that I'm doing. (As an update: In a few conversations that I've had just with friends recently I've been able to run the idea of teaching with the graphic novel by them... and I've had a lot of great responses. Even just my own peers seem interested in the idea, and a lot have expressed that this would have really helped them when they were reading Shakespeare in secondary school.)
I've found a fair amount of research backing up and/or challenging my claims.

What I've been working to improve:
Actual analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a specific vehicle to prove that my ideas work. (Specifically, I was really excited to find a graphic novel version of A Midsummer Night's Dream available in the library. I've been looking at that to find more specifics of where the book could actually serve to better teach an understanding and/or analysis of the text.)
I mentioned that I've found some research regarding my claims, but not enough. I need to find more, and that's my next step.

Troilus and Cressida--Building a Better Argument

Well, here's my post! I've spent a long while on it. I had some trouble uploading the video and it is sideways, so I apologize. I'm not the best in front of cameras (I'm afraid I'm a bit camera shy, so you'll have to excuse me). Frankly, I am proud of myself for making this video, even if no one else is impressed by it! I hope it's somewhat coherent.
 

Report on feedback from initial draft:

From the comments I got from the blog, I realize that my paper wasn't making enough of an argument. It was simply just trying to explain the reasons why Troilus and Cressida wasn't a tragedy. I realize that that is not enough, but I'm wondering if I should just brashly claim that it isn't a tragedy and move on to a more lucrative claim, or if I need to spend at least a little time explaining why it isn't a tragedy (though not as much as I did in this preliminary draft). I guess what I've learned from people's comments is that I need to focus more on why Shakespeare is going against the traditional tragedy in the play and what effect that has. Since this is a pretty significant shift in the focus of my paper, I'm going to have to do some more research.

Revisions, revisions.

I misunderstood the original tweethis/bibliography post idea, and split them up. The combined/revised version follows:

Tweethis. Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 surely grew much in his experiences with Falstaff and the lowbrow tavern crowd, so much that he understood better the common man in his later ascent to the throne and in his reign as King Henry V. However, looking at some chronicles of history concerning Hal's relationship to King Richard II, Shakespeare's depiction of Hal's rebellion can be seen as a manner of disapproval or dissatisfaction with his father's usurpation of the crown.

Social Graph. With my thesis leaning toward a historical approach, and my lack of friends who have a knowledge of British history, I haven't been able to get much from roommates, friends or family. I admit I'm also hindered by the fact that I haven't had any formal schooling on British history myself.

New Media. I've dabbled in goodreads and imdb for a few. I've enjoyed reading several reviews on goodreads about not only Henry IV, Part 1, but I also ended up looking into what people had to say about the preceding play, Richard II, and also Henry IV, Part 2. I watched the most recent film adaptation of this play which is part of a BBC series titled The Hollow Crown, which covers from Richard II to Henry V. This version's portrayal of Prince Hal is pretty true to what Shakespeare wrote him to be, so while I really loved the production, it didn't back me up with where I'm going. Back to goodreads for a second, I also checked for groups on Henry IV, but I was given nothing.

Using Twitter for Academic Research

I'm a big proponent of turning to new media and social networks when doing traditional academic research. If one goes straight to library catalogues or the indices of academic journals, this is problematic for two reasons: you are pursuing a less efficient, non-social mode of inquiry; and you are consulting only what I call "fossil knowledge": knowledge that has great value, but is not living because one cannot interact with it, and it has been taken out of discursive contexts where it can grow and develop.

Therefore, I'm training my students to follow a socially optimized research strategy that consists of four broad steps:

1. Tell people
2. Curate your research
3. Search new media and social networks
4. Search traditional scholarship

I have focused on the first two of these steps in a blog for another course. Here, I'd like to focus on the third step, searching new media and social networks, with an emphasis on using Twitter.

Troilus and Cressida: A Tragic Misreading?

I'm reading Troilus and Cressida, one of Shakespeare's darker plays that has often been categorized as one of his "problem plays." This play is so rich and full of material that one of my initial reactions was that I didn't know where to start dissecting the play. Its a deeply cynical play that critiques war, love, and human nature. However, it's also a fairly philosophical play.

I found this video of Rob Melrose, who directed a version of the play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as he discusses why he likes the play, why it's such a difficult play to dissect, and what the specific themes of the play are.

I've started working on a few ideas for my paper. I have a few loosely-formed ideas that I'm developing. In class we've been calling them "proto-papers," or preliminary paper ideas. Originally, I had developed three distinct proto-papers that dealt with textual, contextual, and critical issues, but now I have paired it into two separate but related ideas. 

My first proto-paper focuses on the idea that although sometimes grouped in the category of “tragedy,” Troilus and Cressida is an anti-tragedy because what would traditionally be seen as the linguistically “tragic” language (e.g. Romeo and Juliet) is reduced to anticlimactic and unsatisfying language that departs from this traditionally romantic language.

            Most of the play centers on what seem to be very tragic moments, but these moments are never as amplified or as dramatic as we would expect them to be. Additionally, the characters that seek revenge never get that revenge, and the conclusion is unsatisfying. Because Shakespeare is limited to the story lines of the original Greek and Trojan wars, his story line is already sporadic and difficult to follow, but his choice to end the play with a distinctly unromantic ending goes against the tragic trends that he usually used.

Going along with this idea, I also thought it would be interesting to argue that although Troilus and Cressida was based on previous texts such as the Iliad and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare’s version is distinctly more modern and even forward-looking because of its anti-climatic nature and its criticism of traditional tragic values. “Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare's plays, strikes the modern reader as a contemporary document—its investigation of numerous infidelities, its criticism of tragic pretensions, above all, its implicit debate between what is essential in human life and what is only existential are themes of the twentieth century. ... This is tragedy of a special sort—the 'tragedy' the basis of which is the impossibility of conventional tragedy” (Oates). Shakespeare leads the reader to believe that something dramatic will happen. Perhaps it is the fight between Achilles and Hector, or the revenge of Troilus. Yet, these events are unsatisfying, and just seek to draw out a deeper theme of the play—namely, that human nature is vile, lustful, and untrustworthy, and because of that, the primarily noble desires of a tragedy remain unrealized within the play. However frustrating and unsatisfying one of Shakespeare’s traditional tragedies may seem, Troilus and Cressida frustrates readers even more with a nontraditional tragedy that seems more closely aligned to the disappointed hopes and unexplained events of real life.

I'm wondering if I can weave together these two ideas into one mega-thesis about the status of Troilus and Cressida as a distinctly anti-tragedy play. Of course, this may be a large claim to take on, or may even be too simplistic, but for now, it's where I'm at. Feedback is much appreciated.

Oates, Joyce. “The Tragedy of Existence: Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.” Originally published as two separate essays, in Philological Quarterly, Spring 1967, and Shakespeare Quarterly, Spring 1966.