1.What particular insights do such marginalized characters offer? Consider this question in relation to two course texts.
2. Discuss the function of memory in two course texts.
3. Discuss gender issues as they appear in two course texts. How is marriage represented?
What are the power imbalances between male and female voices or characters? Consider these in relation to two course texts.
4. Consider the relationship between life and art in two course texts. There should be a specific work of art within the poem(s), novel(s) or short story(ies).
5. Several of the texts that we’ve examined in the course offer a glimpse into the darker side of human nature. Is there room for both optimism and pessimism within a single work or must one vision ultimately prevail over another?
The topics you can choose from are:
1- Shakespeare, “Sonnet 18,” “Sonnet 73,” and “Sonnet 130”; Millay, “I Being Born a Woman and Distressed”
2- Burns, “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose,” Atwood, “Variations on the Word Love,” and Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
3- Browning, “My Last Duchess” and Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
4- Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “The Flea”, Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” Yeats, “When You Are Old”
5- Larsen, Passing
6- Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
7- Heaney, “Digging,” “Punishment” and “Bog Queen”
8- Barnes, excerpt from A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters
9- King, Green Grass, Running Water
