Close reading passages on the quiz

Dr Wheeler on tragedy (READ THIS): http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Tragedy_Thoughts.pdf

Relevant AP thematic essay prompts:

2000

Many works of literature not readily identified with the mystery or detective story genre nonetheless involve the investigation of a mystery. In these works, the solution to the mystery may be less important than the knowledge gained in the process of its investigation. Choose a novel or play in which one or more of the characters confront a mystery. Then write an essay in which you identify the mystery and explain how the investigation illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

2007

In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

PREWRITE

Answer the question:

• What exactly is the prompt asking? (show how, explain, discuss, analyze)
• The open-ended is often character-based, so choose your character. 
• Draw it, diagram it, map it. 
• Draft a preliminary response. 

SUPPORT YOUR RESPONSE WITH THE EVIDENCE.

• Stay in the text. The essay is about the work, not life. 
  
• Jot down specific moments in the text that may support your answer. Stick with what characters do. We'll delve into motivations in a minute.
  
• What is immediately significant or surprising, something that does not add up? 
• What dominant image is present and what are that image's metaphorical values?
• What contrasts are being presented: opposites, foils, unresolved questions?
• Are there parallels or similar patterns in the text?
• What motivates characters?
• What is significant or surprising about how characters develop?
• What is significant or surprising about how characters react to changes?
• What is ironic?
• Go back to your preliminary response and revise your answer based on your analysis.

SIGNIFICANT TO THE WORK AS A WHOLE

• THE TEXT CONFRONTS THE READER WITH THIS PROBLEM: 
• THE TEXT CALLS INTO QUESTION THE EXPECTED OR USUAL UNDERSTANDING OF...
• THE TEXT ILLUMINATES THIS IRONY OR PARADOX:
• When thinking about these things, consider: 
• the text's view of human nature
• the text's view of life's purpose
• the text's view of how society should be arranged 
  
• the text's view of human motivations
  

Sample upper-level responses as determined by the AP readers:

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap07_englit_operational_q3.pdf

Go to the AP Writing Gateway Page for guidance in writing these responses

Humanities Text Book (pp. 113-117 4th edition; 107-110 5th edition; 100-106 7th edition)

Key Ideas

• The religious and liturgical sources of tragedy

• origins in worship of Dionysus, god of wine, fertility, and ecstasy

   

• Thespis and the development of the tragic form

• Thespis: one actor and chorus

• pathos, suffering (similar to the fates of the dead in Odyssey)

• Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides

• Aeschylus

• second actor and chorus

• characters as types

• Sophocles

• third actor and chorus

• more developed, rounded characters

• “man as he ought to be”

• Euripides

• “man as he is” move toward realism

• individual psychology

•  

• Plot of Oedipus Rex

• The humanist outlook of tragedy: "Man is the measure of all things."

• “Man is the measure of all things.”

• Human reason and ambition in relation to the gods and forces beyond our control.

• Human nature: Who we are and where we are going.

Notes from The Standard Deviants film:

Tragedy

(see also the definition of tragedy in Literary Terms)

• Tragedy is a "terrible beauty."
• Tragic drama is intellectually enlarging and "ennobling."
• Tragedy makes the experience of the tragic figure our experience.
• The audience is moved to pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) as it shares the tragic figure's reversal of fortune and suffering.

Tragic figures, or the tragic hero

• a person of noble birth who suffers a reversal of fortune (peripeteia), usually caused by a character defect (harmatia) or arrogance (hubris)
• Through suffering, the tragic figure recognizes the scope of his action and his place in the universe. By extension, he has a deep insight into human nature. (anagnorisis)
• The tragic figure endures uncommon suffering with uncommon dignity

Catharsis

• "purgation," but also "distillation" and "purification"
• The audience experiences pity and terror.
• We learn what it means to be human.
• We see the magnitude of human suffering and the extent of human potential in the face of that suffering.
• Dramatic irony is the catalyst of the cathartic experience.
• Paradox: The tragic figure and the audience learn that life is a paradox: Those who profess to see are blind; those who are "blind" to the prejudices and arrogance of the world are in  fact "inSIGHTful.".

http://www.youtube.com/user/sphinxriddles?feature=watch

Jocasta's entrance from the same opera: "Nonn' Erubescite, Reges"

The entire oratorio