Literature Mock Exams

 H2 Paper 1 Week 6 Monday 8 – 11am @LT1  H2 Paper 5 Week 7 Monday 8 – 11am @LT1  Papers will be posted on the blog; hard copies will be left in a box where the pigeon holes are. You are advised to come, given time mgt issues for the Prelim Exam.

 Study Hard(y)! - Mr Lim (obviously).

Taming of the Shrew and Top Girls Comparative Analysis

And Beginnings and Endings

Comparison and Contrast of Concerns and Methods of two plays  Noticing and Noting similarities;  Noticing and Noting differences;  Roles; Relationships; Representations (Textuality, and Corporeality);  Showing how your reading of one playtext informs your reading of the other playtext;  Reading one gives you insights into the other;  Should awaken new insights / perspectives  Thus arriving at a new illuminating synthesis

Traditional Gender Perspectives

 Women, a life of Servility and Sacrifice  Men, a life of Discovery and Domination The Battle of the Sexes

TS Courtship; P5 TG Work; Marriage (Education) Motherhood           Concerns / Issues (Gender) Genre (comedy / romantic) Methods (Antithesis and Parody) Structure of Plot (Design) Time and Setting Characterization Grissel p 47 Dialogue: Heightened poetic language (blank verse) Diction (plain) and Syntax Dramatic Irony (intended) Dramatic Effects           Concerns / Issues (Gender) Genre (serious / political) Methods (Ironic Juxtaposition) Structure of Plot (Design) Time and Setting Characterization Griselda Dialogue: Naturalistic plain everyday language Diction (plain) and Syntax Dramatic Irony (Intended) Dramatic Effects

Class Conflict TS TG       England; Outside a low class tavern; Drinks ale / beer Christopher Sly / Katherina parallel Am I a lord…Or do I dream? (Sly) ‘It is a kind of history’ p12 Latin, a signifier of learning, class and patriarchal power taught by Lucentio (as the tutor, Cambio)      England; Inside a high class restaurant; Drinking wine (what Sly calls ‘sack’) Pope Joan / Marlene parallel Marlene’s dreamscape Kind of History  Latin, a signifier of learning, class and patriarchal power, and spoken by Pope Joan

TS TG

 Other worldly: Great Chain of Being  This worldly: Great Chain of Being?

 Scala Naturae  Social stratification   Supernatural Religion of

Christianity

 Decreed by a patriarchal God and sanctioned by a patriarchal church;    Natural Secular religious ideology of

Capitalism

Decreed by man, patriarchal chain of command in the new capitalist world order

TS TG

 Ends with a celebratory dinner; the wedding feast  Celebrating women becoming wives;  Katherina celebrates an entry to a life of domestic enslavement and servitude  Begins with a celebratory dinner  Celebrating a woman’s career advancement;  Marlene, a life of female independence and ‘top girl’ power;

TS Structure TG Structure

Induction (Dream) Induction (Dream)

   Appearance and Reality  Appearance and Reality The Main Plot (The ‘Taming’ plot) the Petruchio-Katherina  The Main plot (Marlene and her fellow ‘top’ girls, Win and Nell courtship and marriage; Petruchio as ‘Top’ man  The un-romantic sub-plot The Romantic sub-plot; the Lucentio-Bianca courtship and marriage concerning the lives of Joyce, Angie; and the underclass office women, Jeanine, Louise, and Shona

Analytical Commentary on dramatic language; stylization of speech Compare analytically the stylization of dramatic language of Katherina and Marlene in the following final act extracts:  Notice the more formal, heightened poetic language of Katherina (diction and syntax);  And the more informal, naturalistic everyday speech of Marlene;  And intended dramatic effects, in context;

Katherina in final act; this section of her speech: 7 lines; 2 sentences Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, I am asham’d that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

Why are our bodies soft, and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world, But that our soft conditions and our

hearts

Should well agree with our external

parts

?

Marlene in final act p 83

 There’s fellas who like to be seen with a high flying lady. Shows they’ve got something really good in their pants. But they can’t take the day to day. They’re waiting for me

to turn into the little woman

. Or maybe I’m just horrible of course. Joyce: Who needs them?

 Well I do. But

I need adventures more

. So on on into the sunset. I think the eighties are going to be stupendous.

Concerns? Education of Women

Taming of the Shrew

 Two schools (Main Plot and Sub-Plot)  Petruchio’s Taming-School: ‘To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue.’ [4.2]  Private Tuition: Poetry and Music;  Lucentio as Cambrio instead of proceeding with education proper, teaching Bianca Latin, the lesson becomes more an exercise in the seduction of Bianca, using the poetry of Ovid

Use of literary classical allusions; Poetry of ancient Roman Poet, Ovid

The Taming of the Shrew

 The ancient Roman poet,

Ovid

 Notably most textually evident?

 In the Lucentio-Bianca subplot;  Lucentio’s wooing of Bianca?

 Using the Latin poetry of Ovid in 3.1  And again 4.2 pg 76  A more subtle manipulative wooing method in antithesis to that of Petruchio’s wooing of Katherina in the main plot;

Lucentio and Bianca 4.2 pg 76; Allusion to Ovid’s

Ars Amatoria

Lucentio

: Now mistress, profit you in what you read?

Bianca

: What, master, read you? First resolve me that.

Lucentio

: I read that I profess,

The Art of Love

.

Bianca

: And may you prove, sir, master of your art.

Lucentio

: While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart.

The ancient Roman poet Ovid, and

Ars Armatoria

 Ovid’s

Ars Amatoria

can be seen in this dramatic context as a witty, cynical textbook for male seducers, offering here an ironic comment on Lucentio’s wooing methods  And Bianca’s mixture of naivety, sentiment, and calculation.

 Overall Dramatic Effect? The play makes clear the true paths to real learning are not those of the school or university, but those of worldly experience;

Top Girls

Isabella Bird: My father taught me

Latin

although I was a girl / Marlene: They didn’t have Latin at my school.

Pope Joan arrives

Marlene: We were just talking about

learning Latin

and being clever girls. Joan was by the way an infant

prodigy

.

Top Girls from Act 1: Pope Joan

I dressed as a boy… Women weren’t allowed in the library. I thought I knew more science than

he

did and almost as much philosophy.

First I decided to stay a man. I was used to it. And I wanted to devote my life to learning.

There was nothing in my life except studies. I was obsessed with the pursuit of truth. I taught at the Greek School in Rome, which St Augustine had made famous.

Women, children and lunatics

can’t be Pope.

Pope Joan quotes from

De Rerum Natura

by Lucretius

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas, Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est, Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri per campos instructa tua sine parta pericli.

Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, /

despicare unde queas alios passimque videre errare arque viam palantis quaerere vitae, certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, noctes atque dies niti praestante labore ad summas emergere opes retumque potiri.

O miseras / hominum mentis, o pectora caeca!

Qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne videre nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utqui corpore seiunctas dolor absit, mente fruatur

Translation of Pope Joan’s quotation from the poet, Lucretius

It’s pleasing, when over a swollen sea winds are stirring up the waters, to watch from the shore another’s peril: not because his troubles are a cause of delight or joy, but because it’s pleasing to recognize what troubles you are free from yourself. It’s just as pleasing to witness battle being waged across a plain, when you are out of danger yourself.

But

nothing is more delightful than to occupy the calm of an ivory tower built on the teachings of wise men; from here you can look down on others as they wander about seeking some path through life, as they strive to be clever, to out-do each other in reputation, battling night and day to get to the top of the pile with their power and wealth.

Note these words most especially in relation to Acts 2 and 3

What miserable

minds

men have! How blind their

hearts

are! To waste their brief span of life in darkness, in peril! Don’t they see all

nature

needs is for life to be lived without physical pain, while the mind, freed from cares, enjoys a sense of delight?

From ‘De Rerum Natura’ by Lucretius (About the Nature of Things)

Education: Angie and Kit [2.2] p43

 Angie 16 yrs old; has dropped out of school;  Watches trash movies, and television; worships style / fashion; Joyce observes:  ‘She’s not going to get a job when jobs are hard to get. I’d be sorry for anyone in charge of her. She’d better get married. I don’t know who’d have her, mind. [To Kit] What do you want to be when you grow up?

 Kit: Nuclear physicist.

Latin: the Tongue of the Fathers

 To enter into the language of Latin, is par excellence, to enter into patriarchy;  Latin, the language of Learning and Knowledge, and hence Power;  Men alone remained teachers of Latinity, like Lucentio as Cambrio, tutor of Latin poetry, in

The Taming of the Shrew

.

Terry Eagleton on History (as applied to) Churchill’s Top Girls  History is not a tale of progress.

 History is a grim narrative;  Whereby we lurch from one kind of oppression and exploitation to another;  Recall those last words of Lucretius, as quoted by Pope Joan

Endings; and final lines; Does this sum up both plays?

Taming of the Shrew

As a comedy, supposed to have a happy ending;  Petruchio : Why, there’s a wench! Come on and kiss me, Kate. // Come, Kate, we’ll to bed. (Sly: Do I dream?)

Top Girls

; Angie to Marlene: Mum?

 Marlene: Angie? What’s the matter?  Marlene No, she’s gone to bed. It’s Aunty Marlene.

 Angie: Frightening.

 Marlene: Did you have a bad dream? What happened in it? Well, you are awake now,… pet? Angie:

Frightening

.

 Ending of ‘Taming’: Comic / Funny, or Dark?

George Bernard Shaw: re- Taming of the Shrew  ‘The last scene is altogether disgusting to modern sensibility.’  Marlene, a modern day Shrew?