Ben Johnson's Alchemist, etc.
 
 

2/22/99 Alchemist, Burke's APhilosophical Enquiry
 
 

ON PAPERS--keep it manageable. You don't have to cover the last 6 weeks. One or two literary works and a theoretical approach or two. Or compare a couple of theoretical approaches. 6-8 pp. Due 3/19. Remember our class policy. You're only expected to sample all the offerings. You need only pursue in depth, for course papers or personal benefit, those dramatic, critical and intellectual venues that you find most interesting.

1. Aristotle and Jonson et al. Anyone care to compare the pleasure we take in satire with the pleasures and pains that Aristotle associates with anger, indignation, envy, slight, hatred etc.?
2. Burke's Philosophical Enquiry § IV ff.) Compare delight as discussed by Burke with sensationalism in general. What about the passions associated with self-preservation that turn on ideas of pain danger and death as discussed in § VI)?
3. Do you agree with § II) that the three states of sensation are pleasure, indifference and pain and that "in the positive sense" these sensations are not related to each other? Could we alternatively, as do some theorists of sensations and passions, fall back on pleasure and pain with indifference itself becoming more and more painful the longer it persists?

2/20/99 Alchemist/ Satire

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/johnreid.html course in alchemy

1. According to Horace, the aim of poetry is to educate and delight. How do you see these various aims of the poet in concert or at odds with each other in The Alchemist.
2. Satire. Satire enforces norms by gently, forcefully, vituperatively or even violently making fun of those who depart from the norms. Thus, if satire instructs by entertaining, we must consider the role of ridicule in the formulation of the satiric pleasure. Any thoughts on the complicated and/or ambivalent quality of ridicule and its pleasures in the project of satire? How do/might the comic pleasures of satire of Jonson's Alchemist differ from the pleasure of tragedy we encounter in Burke or Aristotle?


Where does instruction end and discipline begin?

3. Do you see any connections between the violence and ridicule implicit in satire (and, consequently, in the satisfaction of the satiric work) and passions and impulses that generate a sense of solidarity or community? Does satire encourage us to gang up on the objects of its ridicule? Is there community in condescension?

2/19/99 Alchemist / Horace, Ars Poetica/ Burke, Philosophical Enquiry
 
 

1) Horace and Burke. Compare what Horace says about the aim of poetry, "combining the giving of pleasure with some useful precepts for life," (p. 90) with Burke’s analysis of the moral tendencies of the pleasure we derive from learning about the misfortunes of others. Any comparisons to Sidney’s assessment of what tragedy teaches us?

2. Anyone care to compare tabloid culture and our fascination with injury and mayhem in general with Burke’s assessment of the pleasures in the misfortune of others. Any connections with ambulance chasing, or the crowds that gather at the scenes of accidents, fires, etc?


3) Is this all that rational or moral, or might there be, contrary to Burke’s assessment, a real pleasure taken in the misfortunes of others? Is Burke’s explanation of the moral direction of tragic pleasures too rational to explain the entertainment value of plays such as The Jew of Malta or the Revenger’s Tragedy? How might traditional Christian explanations of the sins of Pride, Envy and Wrath fit into an account of the malicious pleasures of revenge tragedy? Any thoughts on the sensational aspects of gossip, slander, spite and the like?
 
 

3. Compare and Contrast Horace’s description of tragedy (and poetry in general) with Aristotle’s Poetics. Do you find Horace to be more of a moralist than Aristotle?

2/14/99 Alchemist
 
 

1*According to the Oxford World Classics introduction, Jonson is variously regarded as 1): an "austere classicist of Elizabethan drama, writing with a high moral purpose and fastidiously editing his work for posterity."

--Or 2), "the comic playwright revelling in the bustle and clamour of London life, celebrating the rogue and the trickster, and presenting an ambivalent moral world." Where do you situate Jonson?

2* Note the predominance of arcane, occult and/or supernatural material in The Alchemist. Any comparisons to Revenger's Tragedy?

3* Recall 7 deadly sins (PEWSAGL). Look for prominent personfications of any of these figures in Alchemist. Any thoughts on how Jonson is adapting the tradition of the morality plays? Comparisons with RT or JM?

4* If tabloid culture nips at the edges of the physical and moral cosmos, the intelligible universe, our ability to make sense of the world, etc., tragedies such as Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello and Oedipus the King lop off huge chunks with a meat cleaver. On a continuum that runs between these extremes, where would you situate The Alchemist (if you agree with the premise)? Given the frequency of comic and satiric elements in RT & JM, where do you situate them?

5*What role does skepticism play in generating distance from and hence allaying sensational elements within the comic genre and/or tabloid culture? What about tragedy?

6*Consider the differing attitudes about crime, justice, injustice, human failings in our dramas. To what extent to they instruct and/or entertain us? To what extent, merely entertain? What do they teach us, if anything?
 
 

7* Consider the differences in characters, heroes, villains, deceivers and deceived, etc., in our dramas.