2/11/99

Corrupt politicians and the criminal element, plotters and counterplotters. Consider the way that the similarity of these categories subverts the ideal operation of the law and problematizes notions of justice and its application within our dramas.  To what extent are (or are not) the revengers justified in taking the law into their own hands?

Points to consider
(you may wish to take into account any, all or none of the following)

* Answers to this question may include discussions of affects such as pity, fear, indignation, anger, envy or other forms of malice, etc, as detailed in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics.

* How are issues of justice, injustice, insult, revenge, plotting and counterplotting complicated by the presence in our drama of  tragic and/or comic elements? Burke anyone?

* How do the tensions, distinctions and contradictions existing between Machiavellian and Christian ethics factor into this discussion?

Compare the machiavellian characters in our plays. Are Firneze and Antonio closer to Machiavelli's ideal of the prince than either Barabas or Vindice? How do the latter characters'  status  of rogues and tricksters further distinguish them? Do such distinctions explain the difference between Machiavelli's conception of the prince and the Machiavel of the Elizabethan and/or Jacobean stage? Remember, for  Machiavelli, "the end justifies the means" does not mean "anything goes." You may also consider characters from Jonson's Alchemist in your analysis.
 

HOMEWORK

Reader #1 available at Grand Copy, 2140 Oxford St (by Ben & Jerry's)

Fri 2/12 Read Burke's "Philosophical Enquiry" sections 14 & 15 (pp.42 -44) on sympathy and tragedy.

Complete Jonson's ALCHEMIST  and "Oberon" for Wednesday
 

SENSATIONALISM--sex, scandals, violence, crimes, accidents, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, cults, people who are different, exoticism, oddities, the supernatural. What are the pleasures in hearing about or seeing such things?
           On the pleasures of imitation/ representation see Aristotle Poetics 4. Rhetoric on the pleasure of anger. How do the affects of pity, fear and wonder contribute to our understanding of sensationalism and its pleasures? How about shame,shamelessness, friendship, enmity, envy,  spite, indignation, etc?

How does sensationalism relate to Christian definitions of morality involving faith, hope and love, and, conversely,  the 7 deadly sins?

How does sensationalism relate to the vagaries of fortune/ good and bad luck?  Think about hope, fear pity and the sensationalism surrounding lotto hype, and near misses with extraordinarily good or bad fortune.

1) The Revenger's Tragedy is fundamentally amoral. The traditional elements of  morality plays such as allegorical personae (Vindice, Castiza, Lussurioso, Ambitioso, etc.),  as well as the manner in which divine retribution seems to aid  human revenge through what appears to be an uncanny  design at work in the plot's construction of circumstances are devices employed by the author to give us "a morality play without morality." Agree or disagree.

2) In his "Apology for Poetry,"  Sir Philip Sidney says  "tragedy. . . openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants;…that, with stirring of the affects of admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builded"
Agree or disagree with all or part of this assertion in regard to its application to our  tragedies.

3) Combine questions 1 & 2 in any plausible argument.