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Essay Instructions: "the popular distinctions between comedy and tragedy are faily simple: comedy is funny; tragedy is sad. Comedy has a happey ending, tragedy an unhappy one....Succcessful tragedies though they involove suffering and sadness, do not leave the specator depressed. Some funny plays have sad endings" T.A. Arp

Imagine your are a literary critic working for the NY times. It is the year 2050. Your assinment is to consiter the above qutoe and write an analysis of it, using as evidence, refernce, and focal points the plays discussaed in class for this course.

PLays:
Oedipus Rex
Antigone
Medea
Hamlet
A Dolls House
Glass Menagerie
Death of a Salesman

Essay Instructions: Prompt: Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail (2001) is a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch film, The Shop Around the Corner (1940). In your paper, compare and contrast the two films and consider the ways in which each film uses humor to support and/or subvert the classical Hollywood romantic comedy plot as articulated by the Kristine Karnick and Doug Williams readings. Your paper should examine the chief characteristics of romantic comedy and explore specifically how Ephron updates and augments “classical” features with contemporary attitudes on gender, class, race, and sex. Be sure to use specific examples from both films to illustrate your points.

I will be sending in lecture notes, look specifically at the last tab on the lecture notes for information on Nora Ephron and romantic comedies.

i will also be sending in two readings that might be helpful.

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Essay Instructions: choose three films from the genre (using the list of films below), compare and contrast and don't forget to identify the conventions of the genre. The Belton text is a good starting point for research, but outside research is required. Dirks and Thomas Schatz are two good writers on genre theory. discussion on THE RULES of GENRE SHOULD BE THOROUGH.

Assignment:

show your understanding of the "rules" that govern the particular genre (e.g., attributes of the main character, roles of women, qualities of the villain, narrative conventions, conventions of the setting, etc.). you should also reflect on social and historical trends in relationship to the films, the times that they portray, and the times in which they were made.



discuss and analyze 3 comedy films in terms of the genre. Discuss the genre story pattern, stereotypical characters, icons, and basic conventions as well as the social function of the genre. Analyze how the film conforms to and/or differs from established genre expectations, and posit reasons.

include a minimum of 3 additional scholarly resources (excluding your course materials). Make sure to follow proper MLA or APA formatting and check grammar, spelling and mechanics before submitting.

*Thomas Schatz teaches film at the Univ. of Texas in Austin and has written several books and numerous essays on the topic of film genres in general and westerns and war films in particular.


film choices: Bringing Up Baby (1938), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Graduate (1967), Annie Hall (1977), Say Anything (1989), The Holiday (2006)
please use proper language and specific cinematic terms you absolutely must reference 3 scholarly resources. please do not double space and provide mla format bibl. seperately.

Essay Instructions: I have begun to write a paper which illustrates the simlilarities and differences of traedy and Comedy. I have used Greek and Shakespearean Drama as my points of focus. from each genre, I have used Oedipus rex, Lysistrata, A midsummer Nights dream, and othello as evidence to my claims. The paper is mean to explore the structure of tragedy and drama during the perspective periods and as a whole. please e-mail me with any articles or sources, as I will continue to work on the paper as well. If you can also focus on researching Comedy in both Greek and Shakespearean Drama that would be greatly appreciated, my expertise is more grounded in the tragedy aspect of this paper. The cruicial aspect must connect all the major points and bring to fruition the realization that although different in delivery, and structure, both comedy and drama provide a cruicial focal point in the reflection and questioning of human exsistence.
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