Overview/Process: This essay will ask you to approach a specific repetition in Arcadia from a consideration of the entire play. In other words, the specific claims you make in the paper should proceed from a thoroughly developed and clearly presented statement of the whole. A statement of the whole is a single sentence of about 10-15 words that encapsulates your sense of the plays overarching matter (ie. its central question, problem, tension, concern). Your statement of the whole should not be reducible to individual characters or specific plot points, but rather it should distill the complex interplay of all the characters and conversations and plot lines working throughout the play. Develop a working statement of the whole before you begin the paperwith the understanding that this statement will likely undergo several revisions and amendments over the course of the writing. The paper will also ask you to think in terms of repetition. What does it mean within the universe of this text that certain key moments recur in other timelines involving other characters? Outline: 1. Your essay will open by presenting your statement of the whole: Tom Stoppards Arcadia (1993) is a play about ___________________________. Following this opening sentence, your introductory paragraph should provide basic evidence to demonstrate the various ways that the play can be read through this lens. 2. In the next paragraph, working through the lens of your statement of the whole, identify a single repetition (a piece of dialogue, an action, an exchange of ideas between two characters, etc.) that brings together the two separate timelines. 3. In some number of paragraphs to follow, interpret and analyze each instance of the repetition — and quote directly from the text as you do so. Be sure to demonstrate how the two moments mirror and meaningfully differ from one another. 4. In the course of this work, be sure also to demonstrate how this particular repetition is in conversation with the plays broader structure (its use of time/space, objects, scene ordering, etc.) and with your statement of the whole. 5. End the paper with a brief paragraph that presents a compelling question left unanswered by the work of the paper and demonstrates the value of exploring it towards a better understanding of Arcadia. Reminders: At no point, in the conclusion or anywhere else in the paper, should you make reference to anything outside the particular details of the play itself. Also, do not go to any outside source for your papers ideas and/or language. Unattributed influences from outside sources will be considered plagiarism. The essay should be 3-4 pages (MLA format: Times New Roman, double spaced, in-text citations). Consider your reader to be a student in our class someone whos already read the play, discussed it for approx. 8 hours, and written on it twice already. What are you able to show your reader that isn’t already commonly shared?Show more
