Friday, February 19, 2010

Essay Topic!

Love is in the air .....

Write your brains out. I welcome posts for questions, comments, concerns, but no complaints. You can use the blog as a forum for essay discussion if you like.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Daniel

Hay, I'm working on my essay and I was wondering what ideas anyone has had about it.


I still can't decide whether or not to have Viola, or Maria and Sir Toby as the personification of love. On the one hand,Viola's love is "an ever fixed mark" towards Orcino. On the other hand,Orcino's "love" for Viola is obviously not the type described by Shakespeare. They can't really be a "marriage of two minds" if the love is not true from both of them. Maria and Sir Toby's love is also a bit unclear. Although they obviously care for and admire each other, Fabian states that Toby married her as recompence for the letter against Malvolio. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Cara said...

Cara

Hey, I'm having similar problems as Daniel. Something that Shakespeare makes very clear in his sonnet is that love is consistent, never changing and endures everything. This is definitely not true for Olivia and Orsino since they change who they are "in love with". I tried to write it about Viola since she loves Orsino even though hes a jerk but its hard since we only see her love for him for a couple days. We don't know if it is going to last or withstand any kind of crisis.
Anyone have any thoughts?

MC said...

Daniel and Cara and others:

The decision of whom to parallel to Shakespeare's definition of love is not meant to be easy. It is meant to force you to be creative. I do believe you can make a good argument for Viola, Orsino, Olivia, Maria or Sir Toby. And I'm not just being difficult. Orsino is a consistent lover of love. He woos with great passion, with great fervor. Viola is steadfast and loves only one person throughout the novel, but you would also say she is the epitome of love in that she is constantly searching for her brother. Olivia might be a good example of self love (Orsino, too), and you can parallel that kind of love to the sonnet. Don't just analyze romantic love; move beyond that and I think you might 1. have more fun and 2. an easier go at finding a character who fits Shakespeare's mold. Just my thoughts.

Love that you posted questions!

Mary