COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO WORKS
This paper asks you to develop a thesis about the relationship between TWO literary works mentioned below. Your essay should prove a thesis about both works in relation to each other.
Hint: It’s always best to build a two-part thesis out of a significant difference between two works, rather than arguing that they are more or less the same.
You may write about any works we have read so far: the four Shakespeare plays, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and All’s Well that Ends Well, or the novel Gertrude and Claudius. You can also write about any film version of any of these plays, especially the Branagh Much Ado, Luhrman Romeo + Juliet, or the Kozintsev Hamlet.
1. CHOOSE YOUR OWN: Always the best option!
2. GENERATIONAL WAR: How does each of these plays depict a struggle between older people (especially parents, but also Friars, Dukes, Kings) and the rising generation? What does Shakespeare want to say about the conflict between the generations?
3. POLITICS AND GENDER: How do these stories speak our changing cultural ideas about gender and race? How might any two works present different ideas of the intersection between sexual orientation and gender politics?
4. VIOLENCE AND SEX: A series of fairly brutal jokes about swords and penises appear in Romeo and Juliet as well as other plays. War stories parallel love stories even in the comedies. What does Shakespeare want to say about the relationship between these two human desires and actions? Are war and love more closely connected than we might wish?
