Write an at least 750 words essay that defends a thesis you developed through a close critical reading/analysis of one literary works listed below.

Assignment: Write an at least 750 words essay that defends a thesis you developed through a close critical reading/analysis of one literary works listed below and supported by at least one secondary source drawn from such academic databases as the MLA International Bibliography, JSTOR, and Project MUSE. You will access these databases through the Troy Library website, not general web searches. This essay relies mainly on textual support from the primary text, but includes at least one secondary source that supports/sustains the student’s argument. Do not confuse “critical analysis” with “plot summary”; the goal is to develop, sustain, and advance a thesis based on a critique of the primary text but supported in part by at least one secondary source. Choice of two topics—write on only one: Topic 1: Analyze one soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Othello so that you can show how the speech’s imagery helps us to understand what Iago or Othello is thinking and doing at that point of the play. Use the discussion boards to ask questions—there is an entire section in the discussion boards for the speeches. You are analyzing the speech to give a sense of HOW Iago and Othello explain their thoughts—you do not want to merely summarize the speech. As with Essays 1 and 2, this is thesis driven—you are not given a thesis here as in Essay 1, but must invent one as in Essay 2. So, the thesis should say something about how the speech reveals Iago or Othello’s character and what they are thinking at this point in the play. You will want to go through the speech and examine how each line builds up the speech—go through it line by line (not to summarize though), to show how it all comes together through the specific imagery in the speech. The soliloquies are: Iago: Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 367-88 (1.3.367-88) Iago: 2.1.269-95 Iago: 2.3.299-325 Iago: 3.3.336-345 Iago: 4.1.93-103 Othello: 5.2.1-22 You will want to formulate a clear thesis (a statement about what you believe the speech says or does most strikingly, in your opinion) and develop your argument showing how it achieves this by drawing evidence from such elements as simile, metaphor, vocabulary/diction, symbol, rhyme, etc. Use the elements discussed in the Backpack Literature chapters and in our discussions as your guide. Your goal is in no way here to summarize the speech. Rather, go through each line very carefully, explaining how each image adds to the speech’s overall impact and progress—each of Iago’s speeches shows us how his thinking is developing and how his plan comes together. Othello’s speech shows us the result of Iago’s work on him— Othello is possessed by the idea that Desdemona has not only been unfaithful to him, but will bewitch and cheat on other men. You will want to formulate a clear thesis (a statement about what you believe the speeches say or do most strikingly, in your opinion, to develop the common themes) and develop your argument showing how they achieve this by drawing evidence from such elements as simile, metaphor, vocabulary/diction, symbol, rhyme, etc. Use the elements discussed in the Backpack Literature chapters and in our discussions as your guide. You MUST USE direct quotes to support a thesis in a tight, focused argument; a good rule of thumb is one quote per paragraph. Each speech has strong elements to choose to analyze, and I will certainly be happy to talk to each of you about possible quotes. I look forward to reading your essays. There is one required outside source. This source cannot be from just any author or website—any use of a site like SparkNotes, Shmoop, eNotes, etc. will not fulfill the requirement and should be avoided. These are not university level sources. Instead, you must use the MLA International Bibliography of JSTOR Arts and Sciences—databases you must access through the Troy Library: http://trojan.troy.edu/library/ When you access that link, you should see this screen: In your browser (not the image above), click on ‘Databases by name:’ and then type ‘MLA International Bibliography,’ ‘JSTOR,’ Project MUSE.’ It is useful to go through all three to find good sources. If you are off-campus/off-site, you will be prompted to enter your Troy email address and password for access to the databases. Do so. You will then be in the MLA Bibliography through EBSCHOhost (or JSTOR or Project MUSE). When you search here, simplicity is best. Start wide–just the author’s name and/or the title of the play. Here, I might start with ‘Shakespeare Othello’ or ‘Wilson Fences’ and be sure to select ‘Linked Full Text’ articles from all sources. Since most of us are not able to get to main campus and the library, we want to search only for ‘full-text’ articles so we can read and download them remotely. You will need to read several articles to find one that fits your argument. Do not simply ‘drop’ a quote or two from your article into the essay—as in 1101, all outside sources must be logically incorporated into your essay with an attributive phrase and analysis that ties the quote to your thesis. Here’s what that search screen should look like: Quality research takes time. It is not easy, and results rarely fall into one’s lap. One needs to understand that diligence and reading a lot of material that might not directly help one’s research project is a part of the job. Please email me with questions/ideas/problems. I am here to help! Basic Guidelines: • • • • • • • • Double space your essay; include your name, the course number and section at the top of the first page Avoid the use of the second person as it is conversational and too direct. Use the first person to describe your own thoughts, but better to use the third person. Introduce your poems and authors by full title and his/her full name early in the paper. Thereafter, only use his/her last name. Do not focus on the writing process. Be sure that you do not simply summarize or paraphrase the speech or speeches. Assume the reader knows the play you are talking about; your job is to help the reader see below the surface and understand the speech or the speeches better. Write in the present tense, but do use tenses to show chronology in the speech itself as needed. Always use direct quotes to support your claim, and thoroughly explain what each quote means and why it is important to your thesis. A good rule of thumb is one quote per paragraph. Examine how Shakespeare and Wilson use language—including similes, metaphors, and other comparisons, symbols, rhymes that link concepts, archaic meanings of words and their etymologies—use the OED through the links at the Troy library website (you pay for the subscription as part of your tuition—use it), etc. What you’ll be graded upon: 15% Introduction: You establish a context for the significance of your thesis in regards to the literary work as a whole. How does your argument contribute to understanding the author’s major literary/thematic concerns? What can other readers learn from your analysis? How does your analysis/critique fit in with other critical responses of the author/literary work? 15% Thesis: You state your main point (or argument) in 1-2 sentences. The thesis is the culmination of your introduction. 30% Organization. Your essay should follow that of typical literary critiques: Since your focus must be on analyzing some literary motif, theme, or a combination of literary elements (such as symbolism, character, setting, etc.), your essay must contain well-structured supporting paragraphs that contain a topic sentence, quotes from the primary text, at least one quote from a secondary source, an explanation/discussion of the significance of the quotes you use in relation to your thesis, and a concluding sentence or two that situates the entire paragraph in relation to the thesis. Your thesis will focus on some kind of critical analysis of the primary text, so your supporting paragraphs should contain quotes from the text that illustrate your thesis/argument; in addition, you should include at least one quote from secondary source to support your argument. Your supporting paragraphs should be organized around each of the quotes you use, explaining the significance of the quotes and why (or how) they illustrate your main point, but you also need to make sure that your paragraphs contain strong transitions and at least six (or more) sentences. 10% Conclusion: Regardless of the argument you make, you want a conclusion that avoids summarizing what you’ve just said, and please avoid writing, “In conclusion.…” Your aim in a conclusion is to place the discussion in a larger context. For example, how might your critical analysis of a literary character relate to the other characters in a work? How might your thesis be applied to other aspects of the text, say for example, setting or symbolism? 15% Grammar and mechanics: Your paper avoids basic grammar mistakes, such as dropped apostrophes in possessives, subject/verb disagreement, arbitrary tense switches, etc. The paper demonstrates a commitment to proofreading by avoiding easy-to-catch typos and word mistakes (effect for affect, for example). The paper adheres to MLA formatting style for in-text and bibliographic citations. 15% Presentation: Your paper meets the minimum length criteria of 750 words, is typed with a title and your name on it. You follow your individual professor’s instructions for formatting (margins, placement of the name, etc). https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.troy.edu/article/689900 ACCESS PROVIDED BY TROY UNIVERSITY LOG IN B R OWS E OR MENU Asian Theatre Journal • • Asian Theatre Journal Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2018 University of Hawai’i Press Article Viewed | Download | Save View Citation Additional Information • “Come, You Spirits”:An Alternative Afterlife to • • • • • Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Othello, as Mediated through Japanese Classical Nō and Kyōgen Theatre • Michael Ingham (bio) and Kaoru Nakao (bio) This study will explore the potential of nō theatre as a form in which adaptations, or more accurately transcultural transformations and appropriations, of Shakespearean drama can flourish in a Japanese cultural context. With reference to specific performance examples we will argue that transculturation of Shakespearean drama through the vehicle of the transcendently metaphysical and ritualized nō in combination with the more dramatically mimetic, if similarly stylized, kyōgen can offer fresh perception of theatrical possibility for both western and Japanese audiences. The practice invites both audience constituencies to share in alternative ways of seeing and feeling about the iconic and sometimes culturally conservative constructs of Shakespeare and nō, respectively. Bearing in mind the phenomenon of cultural mobility and transmission, as proposed by Stephen Greenblatt and others, we will discuss three principal case studies, Izumi Noriko’s 2006 nō Macbeth and 2013 nō Othelloproductions and Nomura Mansai’s 2010 Tokyo mixed-mode production and subsequent touring version of Macbeth. They serve as very good illustrations of how, in spite of the apparent aesthetic restraints arising out of the formality of its theatricality and codification, nō and kyōgen theatre can afford new insights into Shakespeare as a contemporary global theatre practice. [End Page 112] Introduction Japanese Shakespeare is familiar to the broader Western audiences, mainly in its representations by Kurosawa Akira (黒澤明) in cinema and Ninagawa Yukio (蜷川幸雄) and Suzuki Tadashi (鈴木忠 志) in theatre. Nonetheless, the international discourse on Japanese appropriations of the Western Bard into established traditional forms including kabuki (歌舞 伎), bunraku (文楽), kyōgen (狂言) and nō (能) is relatively under-developed, despite growing interest in the phenomenon. Minami Ryuta (南隆太), for example, writing on the nō-Shakespeare fusion, claims that “Noh Shakespeare has not drawn enough academic attention to be known outside Japan” (Minami 2012: 184). In their overview, “Seven Stages of Shakespeare Reception”—Daniel Gallimore’s and Minami Ryuta’s chapter in Jonah Salz’s authoritative and compendious 2016 study, A History of Japanese Theatre—the authors’ seven stages do not specifically include nō Shakespeare, as they do kabuki and shimpa (Gallimore and Minami 2016: 485–486). Presumably their reasoning is that nō adaptations are not yet seen as being sufficiently established to warrant specific reference. We can therefore intuit that nō is subsumed under their seventh stage, designated “reinvention.” Nō’s partner form, kyōgen, has also been employed to great effect in what are often termed “Japanized” Shakespeare transformations, notably Takahashi Yasunari’s and Nomura Mansai’s (野村萬斎) critically lauded Kyōgen of Errors (高橋康也『間違いの喜劇』), performed at the Globe Theatre in 2001 and at the San Francisco International Arts Festival in 2005. The style employed for this production was by no means authentic kyōgen, however; to quote Paul A.S. Harvey, it represents “a modern work of art that hypothesizes a kyōgen version of a classic—both Shakespeare and Plautus” (Harvey 2002: 249). In a very positive Asian Theatre Journal review Kathy Foley (2007: 295) described the actors’ timing as “richly comic,” and commented on how the actors “evoke stock kyōgen characters—servant, master, women—with economy and form.” In Japan itself, as opposed to overseas, achieving visibility and acceptance in a traditional theatre world that jealously guards its conservative ethos and traditions has been a greater challenge. As Kobayashi Seki, writing of the kyōgen traditions and the boom in experimentation in the form during the postwar period, has pointed [End Page 113] out, the iemotos (grandmasters or heads of the respective traditional schools) of postwar kyōgen have tended to be more open to experimental approaches, whereas the iemotos of the nō schools have generally been more resistant to experimentation and change (Kobayashi 2007: 166–167 and passim). Shakespearean characters and motifs in The Kyōgen of Errors and The Braggart Samurai (Yasunari Takahashi’s kyōgen Merry Wives of Windsor, 1991) were potential catalysts for stimulating interest among younger, more Westernized Japanese audiences, as well as capturing useful overseas attention. At the same time, this represents a degree of momentum toward experimental work that respects the integrity and conventions of the traditional forms, particularly among more recent, less conservative generations of Japanese theatregoers. Kawachi Yoshiko (川地美子) has commented on this phenomenon of an increasingly traditionalist theatrical orientation since the turn of the millennium: “[T]he fusion of Shakespeare with nō and kabuki plays represents a current trend in Japanese Shakespearean theatre” (Kawachi 1998: 70). Nō is the oldest continuous theatre form in Japan, dating back to the fourteenth century Muromachi culture. About 250 dramas remain in the repertoire, and are classified into two groups: the dream play or phantasmagoric drama involving ghosts and spirits known as mugen-nō (夢 幻能), and genzai-nō (現在能) about living human characters. In the mugen play (the bulk of the repertoire) the shite or main role is not a human, but, for example, a ghost, deity, or spirit.1 A more nuanced classification was introduced in the seventeenth century (Edo era) in which the type of character played by the shite was the determining factor: the first category is a deity play, and such pieces may eulogize the emperor’s peaceful reign; the second category involves a male warrior’s ghost in recollection of the past; the third category concerns a refined female protagonist who may be a living woman or a ghost-woman; the fourth category contains miscellaneous plays, featuring human characters and passions; and the fifth category play involves the shite portraying a demon. Izumi’s nō Macbeth and nō Othello of this study are dream or mugen-nō works, which correspond to the second (warrior) and fourth (miscellaneous) category plays, respectively. The final case study, Nomura Mansai’s version of Macbeth, also corresponds more closely to the fourth category (miscellaneous), but, being experimental in orientation, has little affinity with the other types. The austerity of classical nō makes it a challenging form in which to present Western plays that tend to be plot-driven and dramatically immediate. The nō form is the antithesis of this aesthetic, adopting a more abstract and retrospective viewpoint on events. One can argue that the word “dramatic” in a western theatrical sense is inapposite. As [End Page 114] Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound noted, “We do not find, as we find in Hamlet, a certain situation or problem set out and analyzed. The noh … presents or symbolizes a complete diagram of life and recurrence” (Fenollosa and Pound 1959:11–12). Recurrence or revisiting, according to the Buddhist belief system, is the conceptual basis for nōadaptations of Japanese literary works, so this conceptual framework is natural when adapting foreign writers, particularly Shakespeare. Nō has a long history of employing legends as sources for its adaptations, and it is therefore not surprising that the idea of transposing Shakespeare into nō was originally broached by a storywriter and novelist, Natsume Soseki (夏目漱石) as early as 1911. For him nō represented a more natural medium for adapting western classics than the more popular kabuki and bunraku. Despite Natsume’s critical recommendation, subsequent adaptations of Shakespeare have tended to focus on kabuki especially. Tsubouchi Shōyō (坪内逍遥), like Natsume an English professor, was the first translator of Shakespeare into Japanese, and favored kabuki as a vehicle for Japanese Shakespeare. His view, as a respected Japanese Shakespeare specialist, was that nō was a heritage form that did not take to contemporary adaptation, and this opinion carried great weight with translators, practitioners, and critics. As a result of the cultural iconoclasm and rejection of tradition that emerged in the 1970s, hybridity and intertextuality became rather common in Japanese theatre, and intercultural initiatives of Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, and Eugenio Barba, especially, became influential. Cultural exchange and a growing cosmopolitanism promoted radical changes in all the arts, eventually spreading even to the conservative nō. University professor and nō aficionado-adapter Ueda Munakata Kuniyoshi (宗方邦義) bridged the divide between nō and Shakespeare; he began his experimentation in the mid-1970s in the United States, and subsequently performed nō in English there and in Japan (Noh Hamlet, 1982; Noh Othello, 1986; and Noh Macbeth, 1987), as well as in Japanese in Japan (Noh Othello, 1992 and 1995). His highly abridged and restructured versions using nō’s narrative context and semiotic code took into account the musical and rhythmic properties of nō, as well as the kinetic conventions. Ueda Munakata’s bilingual book discussing his experience of culturally transposing Hamlet also provided examples of the performance text with musical and movement notation (Ueda 1991). Another nō actor with Anglophone cultural interests, Sekine Masaru (関根勝, b. 1945), has more recently experimented with nō and kyōgenin similar intercultural Shakespeare projects, extending the inter-continental bridge developed by Ueda Munakata, and producing his own study in English on the theories of Zeami (世阿弥-1363–1443), the key figure in the development of the [End Page 115] genre. There is in Japan a growing interest in the possibilities of a Shakespeare-nō fusion that is bo