Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Donne topics
1. Consider the deliberate juxtaposition of rude matters or topics and erudition in two or all three of the poets. What, in your view, leads the writers to make this juxtaposition?
Note: in Latin, what is rude (rudus) is simply matter that has not yet been turned into art.
2. Choose two poems by John Donne to compare and contrast based on their adoption of a similar theme or concern, such as seduction, love agonies, loss, death, separation, or union.
3. Queering the Renaissance: choose any two poets and discuss the place of queer or homosexual desires in their texts.
4. Surprise endings: choose two poets and discuss the sense of the ending, especially endings that come as a surprise.
5. Write a thoughtful paper on how you deal with moments of alienation in reading literary texts, particularly in the contexts of race, sex, and gender.
6. Consider any of the following topics in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream:
a) the bonds between and among men;
b) father figures and other male authorities;
c) rebellious and assertive uppity women;
d) the bonds between women;
e) the goals and methods of courtship–i.e., how do couples forge a good marriage, particularly when the traditional model of wedlock no longer seems satisfying to men or to women?
7. Take any of the tales from Ovids Metamorphoses that we have read and discuss the ways in which it (or they) get rewritten in any of the three poets we are considering in the last portion of our class.
