ENGLISH H590.06:  Topics for Paper I

Due Monday, January 29, your first essay should be 500 words +/- 10% (from 450 to 550 words) and adhere to the formatting guidelines that can be linked to here:

http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/herman145/papertemplate.html

Option A: Identify in two of the texts we will have read by the time your first essay is due (Goethe, Wilde, and Chopin) one relatively major event that causes the protagonist to undergo a noticeable change or transformation. (Examples from Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: The change in attitude that Wilhelm experiences when he discovers, at the end of Book I, what he takes to be evidence of Mariane's unfaithfulness; or the change that Wilhelm undergoes as a result of receiving, in Book VII, chapter 9, his "Certificate of Apprenticeship.") Then compare and contrast the type of transformation that seems to take place as a result of the event that you identify in each text. How is each protagonist shaped by the event? In turn, what underlying model of "Bildung" (= education, formation, development) is implied by this transformation? How does this change reflect the more general process of education or formation portrayed in the text? Or does the change seem to be at odds with that more general process, in some way?

Option B: Both Book 6 of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship ("Confessions of a Beautiful Soul") and Kate Chopin's The Awakening portray female protagonists who undergo a process of education or formation as a result of their experiences. Basing your discussion on specific textual details (you'll probably have space to discuss only one key scene or episode from each text), compare and contrast the kind of education or formation at work in each of these two texts. In what ways are the two characters educated by their respective experiences, and which character's education proves more radically transformative (and why)? To what extent does the process of education, in each case, involve a conflict or tension between the individual protagonist and the community or communities to which she belongs?

Option C: In all three of the texts that we will have read by the time your first essay is due (Goethe, Wilde, and Chopin), the authors portray actions that violate dominant ethical and moral codes--codes that structure the social worlds in which the characters interact with one another. These codes pertain to sexual conduct, dealings with professional or personal acquaintances, relations with spouses and family members, etc. (Of course, the codes portrayed in Goethe's, Wilde's, and Chopin's fictional worlds may not be the same as those playing a dominant role in the social worlds in which we now live.) Focusing on just one transgressive action either committed or encountered by the protagonist in two of these texts, compare and contrast how it affects the process by which the two protagonists are educated or formed. In other words, to what extent does education or formation depend on acquiring mastery of the relevant ethical and moral codes, and to what extent can resistance against the codes be educational or formative in its own right?  In the two texts that you cross-compare, does one of them place greater emphasis on learning the code whereas the other places more emphasis on learning how to break it? If so, what follows from this difference? Are different models of education or formation involved?