Class Notes: November 22nd - November 26th

History of Hamlet

• Halmet is an actual account of a guy named Amleth
• The original ending was that Amleth plots revenge against his uncle and becomes the new and rightful king of Jutland
• Hamlet is based on a Norse legend composed by Saxo Grammaticus in Latin around 1200 A.D.
• Saxo's story was first printed in Paris in 1514 and it was translated into French in 1570
• Saxo's text did not appear in English until 1608
• Shakespeare probably used the earlier play based on this Norse legend by Thomas Kyd, named Ur-Hamlet, of which no copy currently exists
• Hamlet, as told by Shakespeare, is a drama, and thus has the peculiarities and limitations of a play as discussed earlier in my notes
• This story that Hamlet was based on no doubt affected the way Hamlet was written
• This history reminds me of Macbeth, and how we learned in British Literature about the real Macbeth and his family after reading Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Types of Tragedy

• There are 2 kinds of Renaissance tragedy: Continental and England
• The term Renaissance tragedy is typically reserved for Continental tragedy, which was inherited from the Greeks
• Elizabethan tragedy is used to refer to English tragedy, which was inherited from the Romans (seneca)
• Hamlet is an Elizabethan tragedy

Tragedy

• Tragedy is an imitation of a single, unified, action that is serious, complete, and has a certain magnitude
• As defined previously in my notes, "Tragedy: a medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great man"
• Tragedy deals with the fall of someone whose character is good, believable, and consistant, and whose fall is caused by an error or fraility (hamartia=tragic flaw), rather than a vice or depravity)
• The ups and downs of life are related to the issue of free will (not destiny) in setting the plot
• Revenge tragedy was inspired by Seneca and was made popular in the Elizabethan period by Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.
• Revenge tragedy usually revolves around a son's revenge for a father's murder (or vice versa). The murder is then revealed and directed to the protagonist by the murdered man's ghost. It is a conscious and forced action.
• Hamlet is a revenge tragedy
• The play plot of a revenge tragedy may include: the hero's hesitation, the hero's insanity (real or pretend), the hero comtemplating suicide, levels of intrigue, an able and scheming villain, many philosophical soliloquies, and sensationalized murder on staged, or dead bodies shown on stage
• An revenge plot may include: the offense can be maximized by repeated injuries and insult, the antagonist is effective & formidable (but can still be vulnerable), clarification of strategy and marshalling of resources, delays, obstacles, diversions, mistakes, and reservations retard momentum, unforeseen development almost thwards scheme, and a final showdown in which revenge is carried out in an answerable style
• Intensified revenge tragedy is tragedy of the blood and includes the theme of revenge and retribution (borrowed from Seneca) through murder, assassination, mutilation, and carnage
• Seneca plays (Latin) satisfy the audience's craving for morbid excitment
• Elizabethan audiences enjoyed Seneca plays for its bear-baiting spectacles and public executions
• Horrific tragedies have a revenge motif and audience expectations

Why did Hamlet accuse Gertrude of incest?

• Upon marriage in the Catholic church, a couple becomes one
• If they are one flesh, then to marry your dead husband's brother is to marry your brother
• Thus in England, for example, marrying your dead husband's brother was considered incest
• This was not just a technicality
• Henry VIII broke from Rome because he wanted a divorce from Catherine, who had earlier been married to his elder brother
• This is important because the 1st marriage with Catherine would be invalid and his 2nd marriage would not be questionable (because Henry broke from the church in order to have it) because Henry was never married to begin with, so he didn't need a divorce!
• Thus, this makes Elizabeth I's reign more legitimate

Hamlet: Highlights from the Discussion

• At first, he pretended to be mad, but later, did Hamlet truly become mad?
• Hamlet was Hamlet 2.0. He was trained and born to be king. When Hamlet was not immediately needed to be king, he was sent to Germany for school. There, he encountered new ideas: he did not need to be Hamlet 2.0, he can be an individual. Yet, Hamlet = Denmark.
• Hamlet is suspicious to begin with. People don't get a 2nd chance to regain his trust.
• Shakespeare used clowns to break the tension and add comic relief. They also added shrewd insights

Homework

• Core Concepts Journal
• Informal essay discussing the atmosphere established by Hamlet's 1st scene and explaining how it relates thematically to the rest of the play. 

“Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog” by Kitty Burns Florey| Published Dec., 2004 | A Reflective Essay Analysis

             In “Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog”, Florey uses a pensive, adoring, and almost secretive tone in order to tell us of his experiences with diagramming sentences. For example, Florey is adoring and seemingly shares a secret with me when she writes, "On a more trivial level, part of the fun was being summoned to the blackboard to show off. There you stood, chalk in hand, while with a glint in her eye, Sister Bernadette read off an especially tricky sentence". The pensive aspect of the essay is shown through words such as, "I have no illusions that diagramming sentences in my youth did anything for me...But in an occasional fit of nostalgia, I like to bring back those golden afternoons...."

           I like Florey's tone in “Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog” because it adds flavor to the essay. The tone does this by taking me back to the author's time and causing me to view the world-past and present-through her eyes.

           Although I really like the tone that Florey adopts in “Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog", I don’t think it’ll work for an AP essay because it's too informal. Throughout many parts of the essay, I felt like the author was either telling me a secret, or sharing some intensely private moment with me, and I'm not sure if essays like that are what AP readers want.

          Through Florey’s use of rhetorical devices in “Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog”, she not only allows the reader to understand better her essay, but also helps it flow better. For example, Florey uses parallelism and tricolon, such as when she says, “...diagramming sentences...memorizing poems and adding long columns of figures without a calculator" to facilitate the flow of the passage and to add power to his recollection of the educational value behind the activities of his youth.

            Florey made a good diction choice with "measles" when she wrote, "it [diagramming sentences] swept through American public schools like the measles". Although the denotation of measles is simply something along the lines of an infectious disease in children, the connotation of measles causes the reader to think about the spread of sentence diagrams as a bad thing, something that may scar childhood innocence like measles does. This clever utilization of a word's connotation adds power to the sentence. Florey's use of diction and alliteration (such as when she says, "saintly script") throughout her essay adds a certain spice, imagery, and flow to her essay that would not have existed otherwise.

         All in all, "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog" is a enchanting essay that is neatly executed. The only weakness that I perceive in the essay is that various sentences in the essay were diagrammed, so that since I am a younger reader, I had to stop and stare at the sentence diagram for a while before I could understand what was going on, disrupting the flow of the essay for me. But I think this is made up for by the creativity that the author has shown in adding sentence diagrams to the essay in the first place.

Source: http://harpers.org/archive/2004/12/0080308

“Halloween's Afterlife" | Published 11/3/10 | An Editorial Analysis

        In "Halloween's Afterlife", the author takes up a informal and conversational tone in order to describe to us the scene that he imagines will become of the city streets now that Halloween is over.

        The author of "Halloween's Afterlife" uses rhetorical devices to help the reader better understand the argument and to help the argument flow easier. For example, when the author uses repetition when he says, "irreverence toward death, which is much less frightening than death's irreverence". He highlights one of the underlying themes of Halloween: to show that we can have fun despite knowing that death will come for us one day, and to show that death does not scare us. This repetition with the word order switched around makes the reader stop and really think about the how true the statement is. Moreover, the use of repetition just makes this phrase memorable and flow nicely.

            In addition, the author’s use of alliteration, as in "grown fat from feeding on ghouls", and the “rule of three”, as seen in "inflatable rat-20 feet tall, paws raised, incisors exposed-" helps the passages sound smoother, and makes the readers more receptive to what the author has to say.

            Although the author does a really good job with taking advantage of most of the rhetorical devices, I think he could’ve taken more advantage of the natural rhythm of English in order to emphasize his points. He could’ve switched around the word order within sentences a bit so that sentences would end with something memorable. This is because the ends of sentences are normally what the reader would remember most. As it stands, his sentences end with phraes like "a while longer", "come down", "to guess", "any night", etc. Nothing that would particulary stay with me for a long time.

            In “Halloween's Afterlife”, the narrative persona is very informal. At various points, I felt like me and the author had a personal joke going on. For example, at the beginning, the author states, "It's a few days after the e'en of Oct. 31", indicating that this essay is to be informal. Also, the author says things like, "The zombie undead will turn out to be very easily disposed of. What will happen to the Puritan graveyard...we can't begin to guess...Soon it will be back to business for the giant rat...Then Halloween will be over, unless, of course, it isn't truly over til the last piece of candy has been eaten". All these parts of the essay help build up the author's voice, which is both ridiculing and intimate. All this intimacy makes me like this essay so much more because it makes me feel like I'm "in" on everything that's going on, and just makes me feel like I'm involved in the essay.

            If this essay were an AP essay, I don't think the voice would be appropriate because the author is too informal and ridiculing in this editorial.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/opinion/04thu4.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

“The Woman Who Had the World Enthralled” by Michiko Kakutani | Published 11/1/10 | A Book Review Analysis

        In “The Woman Who Had the World Enthralled”, Kakutani weaves together a skillful essay using many rhetorical devices to analyze Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. One of those rhetorical devices is parallelism. This is seen when she describes Cleopatra's life as, "epic in scale, mythic in symbolism and operatically over the top" (Kakutani). The above example is also a good example of Kakutani’s use of the “rule of three”, or tricolon to make her essay sound better. Moreover, she helps the flow of her essay and emphasizes her points through repetition, for example, when she says, “Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose it all" (Kakutani). Furthermore, Kakutani uses alliteration in her writing. For example, when she says, “a charismatic and capable woman...and highly competent" (Kakutani). Furthermore, Kakutani skillfully used diction to better her writing. A specific diction choice that really struck me is when she says, "when 'two civilizations, passing in different directions, unexpectedly and momentously' touched" (Kakutani). Her word choice of "touched" struck me because as I was reading this sentence, in my mind, I though, "momentously collided", because two civilizations colliding is a cliche image. Kakutani's word choice of "touched" made me stop. go back, and think about the connotations of "touched" v. "collided". "Touched" implies gentle contact. "Collided" implies violent contact. Although I would normally think of Egypt and the Roman empire's contact as more violent than gentle, I can see where Kakutani is coming with this. Overall, Kakutani's use of rhetorical devices in her essay makes it flow easily and helps her convey her point in an easy to understand manner. The only weakness I see in Kakutani's essay is that it reads more like a summary of Cleopatra's life than an analysis of a book about Cleopatra's life.

            In analyzing Nemesis, Kakutani used Formalist criticism with a hint of feminism thrown in. In her book review, Kakutani mostly summarizes Cleopatra: A Life. Kakutani describes Cleopatra's rise and fall and places her deeds in the context of her time. Yet Kakutani also emphasizes the misconception of Cleopatra as a "wanton tempress symbolizing 'insatiable sexuality' and unlawful love", and instead describes her in more manly terms, "she was a resourceful leader: disciplined, self-assured and shrewd" (Kakutani). Kakutani talks extensively about how Cleopatra was not the "whore queen" everyone thought she was: she was an "enterprising politician" similar in many ways to Caesar.

            Kakutani’s description of Cleopatra reminds me of the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and I think the title of this novel would be extremly appropriate to Cleopatra's life. Both Cleopatra and Okonkwo are natural leaders who, if they lived at the height of their society's glory, would have gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders to have ever lived. Yet as fate has it, they both were born in the wrong society shortly before a fatal clashing of societies. Finally, when all is lost, rather than submit to the conquering party, they both committed suicide. "'An honorable death, a dignified death, an exemplary death'" (Kakutani).


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/books/02book.html?ref=books&pagewanted=print