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Literary analysis of midsummer night's dream by william shakespeare
Critical analysis of Shakespeare's play Midsummer Nights Dream
Analysis of Midsummer Night's Dream
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Throughout this school year our Honors English class has been spending time reading and analyzing multiple classic books, all of which I find intriguing. This includes "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Odyssey", "Candide", and my personal favorite, "Things Fall Apart." This book emphasizes cultural ideas of both the Europeans and the native Africans as they face conflict. The characters in "TFA" demonstrate two different ways to react to conflict. Out of the many books we've read throughout this year, "TFA" was easily the best. TFA allows readers to understand the issue from the perspective of the Africans and the Europeans. In TFA, the European's beliefs clash with the Igbos traditional beliefs. The Igbo tribe worships the earth goddess
and their ancestors, whereas the Europeans believe that there is only one God. This creates complication between the two groups of people. Previously, with the knowledge that I've already had, I figured that the Europeans were just doing God's will. I never presumed that the Igbos were resisting because their religion was a major part of their culture. The Europeans in TFA are extremely harsh with the natives and imperialistic after ignoring their culture, which I feel is something that American society seems to disregard. Being able to read this book gave me major insight on America and Europe, and that we weren't the past heroes that we portrayed ourselves as. The author also keeps the reader involved in the European culture by spreading European allusions around in the book. This detail applies to America and Europe, appealing to a different crowd. The conflict that continuously arises sets those who are stubborn apart from those who are flexible.
Partikian, David. "Critical Essay on Tartuffe." Drama for Students. Ed. David A. Galens. Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
The world of English Literature captures the minds of millions of people worldwide. The stories that are read are new and old and continue to capture the attention of people even to this day. Each piece of literature can go in-depth into settings, themes, characterizations, have great styles and the thing most people enjoy... conflict. Most people don't understand or see the messages these pieces may have in them. Hidden sometimes within complex statements or meanings that the everyday person might not recollect. These "treasures" are waiting to be found and are gold waiting to be found.
Hermia , Lysander , Helena and Demetrius represent young love in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . They are potrayed as foolish and fickle , acting like children and requiring a parental figure to guide them . The parental figures are Hermia’s father , Egeus , and figuratively Theseus , the mortal ruler , and Oberon , the mystical ruler.
Comparing Two Film Versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Introduction The two films we have been asked to compare are both different versions of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. The first was a big screen movie, by Michael Hoffman and made in 1998. This film was set in the 19th Century in the fictional city of Monte Athena and starred major actors and actresses such as Sophie Marceau, Kelvin Klein, Rupert Everett and Calista Flockhart. The second was a budget film made for channel 4 by Royal Shakespeare Company. Adrian Noble was the producer
American Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 783-791
The Loss of Magic Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, there are multiple analyses that one can follow in order to reach a conclusion about the overall meaning of the play. These conclusions are reached through analyzing the play’s setting, characterization, and tone. However, when one watches the production A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Michael Hoffman, a completely different approach is taken on these aspects, leading to a vastly different analysis of the work. Though there are many similarities between the original written play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and the on-screen production of the aforementioned play which was directed by Michael Hoffman, there are differences in setting and
Love can be quite chaotic at times. As much as poets and songwriters promote the idea of idyllic romantic love, the experience in reality is often fraught with emotional turmoil. When people are in love, they tend to make poor decisions, from disobeying authority figures to making rash, poorly thought-out choices. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses various motifs to illustrate how love, irrationality, and disobedience are thematically linked to disorder.
the laws of man and kept in check by society's own norms. The human struggle to
A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in a way, Romeo and Juliet turned inside out--a tragedy turned farcical. The tragedy both are based on is the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe." In one, Ovid's story is treated as a melodrama (in Romeo and Juliet) and in another, it is fodder for comedy (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).
Everyone sees the world just a little differently, and perspective can often stand as something which sets people apart. Controversy abounds in the world, and many people do not see eye to eye, especially when cultures clash, as they do in Things Fall Apart, a novel about the African Igbo culture. This novel by Chinua Achebe tells the story of the village Umuofia, a place which stands untouched and unmarred by the hands of Europeans. In the end, the Christian Europeans and the African natives clash, resulting in a changed world for the people of Umuofia. In Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the Igbo people are portrayed as civilized in that their way of life seems just to them, but to an outsider, their decisions seem peculiar which is due to the fact that a foreigner does not know the culture as intimately as those who are a part of it, which establishes the importance of perspective and an open mind in viewing other cultures.
The quest for complex subjectivity is a process in which one shifts their perspective from objectification to individuality (pg. 63). The purpose of the quest is to address and dismantle the “historically manifest battle against the terror of fixed identity” (pg. 95) This fixed identity stems from the resonating belief of inferiority, and the perspective of being viewed as property to one’s ownership, that was perpetuated during slavery. The traditional African religion, the Orisha, is found to have originated from the Yoruba tribe of West Africa. In the video provided, we are shown how the believers of the Orisha in Brazil, perform a ceremonial offering to the gods Shango and Ogun. These Afro-Brazilians are descendants of the slaves that were stripped from their homelands in African and brought to Brazil to met out the demands of colonizers.
The concept of contrast plays an important role throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare provides many examples of contrast signifying it as a motif. He groups the ideas of contrast together into those of some of the most important roles in the play. Helena is portrayed as tall and Hermia is short. Titania is a beautiful fairy who falls in love with Bottom, who is portrayed as graceless. Moreover, the main sets of characters even have differences. Fairies are graceful and magical creatures, yet tradesmen are clumsy and mortal. Additionally, the tradesmen are always overjoyed while the lovers are always serious with their emotions. Contrast layers throughout the whole play, as examples are shown in nearly every scene. Contrast becomes a constant, important motif to Shakespeare’s playwrite.
William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare’s comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" is a comedy combining elements of love, fairies, magic, and dreams. This play is a comedy about five couples who suffer through love’s strange games and the evil behind the devious tricks. This play begins as Theseus, the Duke, is preparing to marry Hippolyta. He woos her with his sword. Hermia is in love with Lysander. Egeus, Hermia’s father, forbids the relationship with Lysander and orders her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius loves Hermia, but she does not love him. On the other hand, Helena is in love with Demetrius. To settle the confusion, Theseus decides that Hermia must marry Demetrius or become a nun. In retaliation to her father’s command, Hermia and Lysander run away together. Amidst all the problems in the human world, Titania and Oberon, the fairy queen and king, continually argue about their various relationships that they have taken part in. (Scott 336) Titania leaves Oberon as a result of the arguments. Oberon is hurt and wants revenge on Titania. So he tells Puck, Oberon’s servant, to put a magic flower juice on her eyelids while she is sleeping. This potion causes the victim to desperately in love with the first creature that they see. Oberon’s plan is carried out, but the potion is also placed on Lysander’s eyes. Lysander awakes to see Helena, who is aimlessly walking through the woods, and instantly falls in love with her. She thinks that he is making fun of her being in love with Demetrius, so she leaves and Lysander follows. This leaves Hermia to wake up alone. Puck now has journeyed to the area where several actors are rehearsing. He uses his magic to turn one of them into a donkey, in hopes that Titania will awake to see it.
Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known. Chinua Achebe takes this idea into account when he wrote Things Fall Apart. He shows in this novel that unless you know about African culture, you can’t love it or hate it. He shows that Africans aren’t savages like the world thinks they are, and that the Eurocentric world that we live in isn’t correct.
My favourite text is a play titled “Anowa” by Ama Ataa Aidoo which was published in 1969. This book was first given to me by my father on my twelfth birthday. Although I was disappointed initially because I was expecting something “girly” on my birthday, I liked it when I read it because of the moral lessons it portrayed and the language used in the play. However, I got a deeper understanding of the test after I did a post-colonial and a feminist analysis of the text. In my post-colonial analysis, I saw that in a sense Anowa represents the beauty of the formal African society which was destroyed as a result of colonialism.