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Literature & Language
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Topic:

Comic Situations Brought About by Cross-Dressing in Twelfth Night and Good Night Desdemona

Essay Instructions:

Due: March 28, 2017 You must: 1) upload the essay to Turnitin on Moodle, and 2) hand in a paper copy in tutorial (printed double-sided); essays will not be accepted by email. Length: 8-10 pages (2400-3000 words), Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced.

 

Format and citation: MLA Consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers by Joseph Gibaldi (available at Scott library) and/or Purdue University’s excellent site on MLA style: https://owl(dot)english(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/resource/747/01/ Sources: You are expected to rely on course plays and theory and you must cite these according to MLA standards. Likewise, any other secondary sources must be cited. Only scholarly websites will be meet the academic requirements of the assignment.

 

Essay Topics

The objective of this assignment is to consolidate and apply the knowledge you have gleaned from the comedies

and comedy theory in this course. To that effect, you are expected to write on two plays and to use at least two

theory articles to support your arguments. Re-reading and re-writing is fundamental to the academic process so

you may build on the plays and topics analysed in the first essay assignment, if they are relevant to the ones

listed below.

 

1. Examine the comic situations brought about by cross-dressing in Twelfth Night, Cloud Nine and/or Good

Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). Use the ideas on comedy of the following writers to support your

thesis: Kronenberger, Frye, Meredith, Bergson, Langer, Zupančič, and/or Žižek.

 

2. Discuss physical comedy in two of the following plays: Twelfth Night, Tartuffe, Cloud Nine, alterNatives,

Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), and/or The Shipment. Make connections with the concepts

outlined in Peacock, Bergson, and/or Langer.

 

3. Consider wit in The Country Wife, The Rover and/or The Importance of Being Earnest with support from

Congreve, Bergson, Freud, and/or Langer.

 

4. Issues of class, race, and/or gender are central to The Importance of Being Earnest, Cloud Nine, Good Night

Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), alterNatives, and The Shipment. Choose one issue and discuss the comic

approaches employed by two of the playwrights with support from Freud, Bakhtin, Bruns, Zupančič,

Žižek, and/or Langer.

5. Analyse the comic potential of the female characters in two plays by female playwrights on the course

syllabus: The Rover, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Cloud Nine, Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and

The Shipment. What, if any, is the significance of the playwright’s sex? Support your argument with

comedy theory.

 

6. Discuss comedy as a literary genre and the staging of comedy in two of the following plays: Twelfth

Night, Tartuffe, The Country Wife, and/or The Importance of Being Earnest with the support of theatre

videos and two theory readings of your choice.

 

7. Consider a different play by one of the course playwrights and use two comedy theory readings to

analyse a central theme or aspect.

 

Be sure to: • have a strong, clear thesis on the first page • explain how you will defend your argument • support your assertions with examples from the plays and theory readings • cite lines from the plays correctly • express your ideas clearly and concisely • provide transitions to ensure your paper has continuity • use correct grammar and spelling • italicize play and book titles; article titles should be within quotes • number your pages • include word count on last page • proof your paper For concise and compelling writing, read William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style when preparing your essay

Essay Sample Content Preview:
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Comedic Essay
Introduction
Comic Situations Brought About by Cross-Dressing in Twelfth Night and Good Night Desdemona
Twelfth Night is one of the numerous plays that were written by Shakespeare. The protagonist character in Twelfth a night is a female whose dressing style resembles men’s clothing. Twelfth Night is a comedic play and the cross-gender is specifically used to bring out comedy in this play (Suzuki 123). Another play that largely borrows from Shakespeare’s plays Othello and Romeo and Juliet is called Good Night Desdemona that was written by a Canadian lady who is a playwright called Ann-Marie MacDonald. Both Twelfth Night and Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) are comic in their settings (Scott 28). Most importantly to note is that for one to understand Good night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), the person should read all of the three books together for him or her to understand the comedic situations that are highlighted in this play.
This essay examines comedic situations brought about by crossing dressing in Twelfth Night and Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).
Comic Situation Brought about By Cross-Dressing in Twelfth Night
What normally captures the attention of the most modern audiences of the Twelfth Night is the fact that the protagonist character that is presented as a female by the author is dressed like a man in most parts of the play. It is something the audiences find quite funny and unusual. It was quite funny to see a woman acting like a man and how the change of gender has been used to bring out the comedic part of the play. A woman can act like a man, but she will have to turn to her former self once the play is over. A woman cannot permanently become a man, and therefore, there is not much effect that was brought by the cross-dressing in the play but to make people laugh. In Twelfth Night play, the protagonist by the name Viola is presented as a strong woman, but she has to become a man to protect herself and eventually solve the problem that is in the play. When the ship was wrecked at the shores of Illyria, she assumed that her brother Cesario who was in the ship also died, and therefore she decided to disguise herself as a man to work for the Duke Orsino. The comedic aspect that is presented by Viola dressing like a man is that, she was virtually trying to woo Olivia who is playing the role of a woman just like her in the play. It was quite ironical and funny to see a woman wooing a fellow woman simply because she was dressed like a man; the audiences were left in laughter. In the book of Twelfth Night, cross-dressing has been used to represent a world where the nature had been distorted; a woman falls in love with a fellow woman, and a man falling in love with a fellow man. Other than comedic nature of this play, there are demonstrations of different levels of sexual attraction between different characters and homoerotic relationships. Viola is in love with Olivia who is fellow woman, and Orsino is in love with Cesario and Antonia is in love with Sebastian a representation of homoerotic relationships within the play. It would be important to note that Viola was not supposed to act on her own passion the way...
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