Disclaimer: I don't want to spend this entire post summarizing Macbeth, but that is the main thing we learned this week, so here it is. Witches tell Macbeth that he will be king and that his friend Banquo will be father of kings. Lady Macbeth takes this prophecy to heart and convinces Macbeth to kill the king. He does, but grows more and more paranoid about others seizing his power, including Banquo. He ends up killing Banquo, but his reign ends when Lady Macbeth commits suicide and soldiers storm his castle and kill him.
This week we started our critical theory work. First off I'll say that I am really confident about this project. My group is very responsible and hard working and we're covering Shakespearean tragedies, which I am familiar with from other classes. That being said, the main thing we did this week was learn the story we are covering. My group is covering Macbeth, and so we spent the entire week watching the play. We are discussing how Lady Macbeth applies to feminism, which is a good topic because Lady Macbeth is very interesting. She is a strong lead character, and drives most of the story. My main problem with the project is that I don't know much about gender roles during Shakespeare's time. Most of what I think about is how Lady Macbeth applies to modern roles, or how Lady Macbeth applies to what people think about old roles. Does Lady Macbeth defy gender roles because she has power over her husband and convinces him to do things? Or does she fit stereotypes because she serves as a female temptress who leads to Macbeth's downfall, much like Eve did to Adam? Probably a little bit of both, but it's hard to take two opposing stances when writing an essay. So on this one, I'll probably just defer to my groups choice, which is to talk about how Lady Macbeth defies stereotypes.
The other thing that I wasn't sure about this week was whether we are informing or taking an opinion in our projects. The questions that we got seemed to be mostly about informing and understanding the character, but most essays we have written up until now have involved stating what the author's opinion was. But my group and I will discuss that once we get back from break, so I'm not too worried about it.
This week we started our critical theory work. First off I'll say that I am really confident about this project. My group is very responsible and hard working and we're covering Shakespearean tragedies, which I am familiar with from other classes. That being said, the main thing we did this week was learn the story we are covering. My group is covering Macbeth, and so we spent the entire week watching the play. We are discussing how Lady Macbeth applies to feminism, which is a good topic because Lady Macbeth is very interesting. She is a strong lead character, and drives most of the story. My main problem with the project is that I don't know much about gender roles during Shakespeare's time. Most of what I think about is how Lady Macbeth applies to modern roles, or how Lady Macbeth applies to what people think about old roles. Does Lady Macbeth defy gender roles because she has power over her husband and convinces him to do things? Or does she fit stereotypes because she serves as a female temptress who leads to Macbeth's downfall, much like Eve did to Adam? Probably a little bit of both, but it's hard to take two opposing stances when writing an essay. So on this one, I'll probably just defer to my groups choice, which is to talk about how Lady Macbeth defies stereotypes.
The other thing that I wasn't sure about this week was whether we are informing or taking an opinion in our projects. The questions that we got seemed to be mostly about informing and understanding the character, but most essays we have written up until now have involved stating what the author's opinion was. But my group and I will discuss that once we get back from break, so I'm not too worried about it.