Delano Eng 392 03 and 09 1) first work on rough draft, we’ll read and 2) then you’ll revise for a 3 pg. paper.

See format for writing an essay MLA style http://www.csus.edu/owl/index/mla/mla_format.htm aim for 1,000 words

Pope/Shakespeare essay topics. Pick one, and begin to explore – to start out on your 3-4 page essay, which should

include specific (but not overly long) quotations from both texts, and your own thinking, exploration,

discussion.

Note that “Betty is praised for powers not her own” (Canto I). Explore labor in both The Tempest and “Rape of the

Lock.” Who does the labor – or work — in both texts? Explain why? Are others praised for labor not their own?

Are people who do the work given credit? Are people praised for the labor they do?

Compare Ariel in both The Tempest and “Rape of the Lock.” You should include the climate or community or

household in which they work, and to what purpose their work is put.

What ideas do Shakespeare and Pope share about order and balance, or about the value of the rational contrasted

to anger … in their worlds? Look at both The Tempest and “A Rape of the Lock” (100 years apart) for their

arguments about the importance of these abstract values of behavior. You may find that they are not totally in

tune with each other, so your essay can also examine differences.

Contrast Pope’s interest in things in “The Rape of the Lock” with Shakespeare’s attention to things in The

Tempest. Can you bring in ideas about fetishes, the ways in which the relationships between people become

relationships between things (Marx’s view) or drawing on Auslander’s idea/s as well?

Or another way of putting this –
Are there commodities in The Tempest as there are in “The Rape of the Lock”? What is the difference and why?

Explore the views of women & gender in The Tempest and “The Rape of the Lock” – do the views and values about

women differ in these two narratives? In what ways? Create a statement about this, and explore by looking at

specific moments in the text – while understanding the overall points of both play and poem.

Anger, revenge, resolution:
How would we compare Shakespeare’s insistence on mercy in The Tempest, and Pope’s resolutions to Belinda’s rage

in “The Rape of the Lock”…? Note Pope’s concern that “in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage” (Canto 1 page

25). Look for the specific moments in the text which describe these problems, and then go on to explore the

various resolutions, similar, or different?