Week 5 Prompt: Close Reading Plays

Due: Wednesday, September 21, by 6 pm

Explanation

This week, we begin our unit on plays. So far, our close reading exercises have attended to shorter works (or short sections of longer works), but now we will have to use our powers of explication to explore longer, more sustained texts. This at first may seem daunting, but be assured, the method is no different.

As we reviewed in class this past Thursday, close reading involves reading carefully and keeping your senses attuned to things within the text that strike you as interesting, disturbing, significant, etc. Be certain to mark the passage or passages that strike you, so that you can come back to them. Once finished, reread the striking parts, choose one that you find the most compelling, and describe how it works and what it means.

Remember, you do this by:

• identifying what rhetorical effect/s are at work within the particular passage; 
• explaining the way the rhetorical effect/s function in the context of the passage; 
• and, finally, suggesting why the meaning, derived from the effect, is important for understanding the entire work. 

Close reading always moves from the particular (passage/effect) to the universal (entire text). From the effect you will provide a new way of reading the entire work. In many ways, this new reading forms the basis of your argument.

Details

• Read both plays for this week (Oedipus Rex and Lysistrata) 
• Perform a close reading and interpretation on one and only one play 
• Focus on only a single passage 
• Identify and interpret no more than two important rhetorical effects at work within the passage. 
• Write your argument in 450 to 650 words. 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT. 
• All assignments must be EMAILED TO ME by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not EMAILED TO ME by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit.