Lecturer's Office Change

My office move has finally been completed: I am now in FASS 5192.

NLP and Derren Brown

Here are links to the 'neuro-linguistic programming' clips that we viewed from the English mentalist Derren Brown who is doing something for a living that Shakespeare does, in part, for his drama. (Thanks to classfellow CS for the suggestion.)

• Birthday Present
• Paying with paper

Tragedy and Comedy

More useful questions from students came after class today. One required clarification of the Aristotle's treatment of two types of drama: Tragedy and Comedy.

Remember that Tragedy is imitation of actions of men or women that are better than ourselves, and Comedy is imitation of actions of men or women that are worse than ourselves.

Tragedy (in Aristotle's Dramatic sense) is not a synonym for "sadness" nor is Comedy (in Aristotle's Dramatic sense) a synonym for humour. Tragedy can contain humour and Comedy can express sadness.

MId-Term Topics

Following the Mid-Term essay criteria listed in the course syllabus, below are the topics from which you chose one. The five-paragraph model detailed in lecture will form the basis of your essay, and, along with the parsimony criterion, are the expectation of your marker.

1. Use Aristotle's doctrine of the Golden Mean to explain the requirements of effective character (in the sense of dramatis personae) detailed in the Poetics.
2. Dr. Johnson sets forward a very compelling principle of quality by which drama (and by extension art generally) can be judged. Detail his principle, expound it in terms of common sense, and give your evaluation of its validity. You may consider using any dramatic work of less than a century's vintage to help illustrate your argument.
3. Does Æschylus give a dialectic or a didactic treatment of Fate in Prometheus Bound? Use proof by both quotation and logic to support your determination.