ENG 4150 DMWA Berggren
Paper Assignment
Truth in The Spanish Tragedy
DUE: Friday, 22 February—to be submitted via e-mail by 11:59 p.m.
LENGTH: 3-4 pages (750-1000 words)
TOPIC: Proserpine has Andrea led back from the underworld “through the gates of horn, / Where dreams have passage in the silent night” (1.1.82-83). This implies that the play depicts a true vision that can be trusted. Yet the discovery of truth seems problematic at best. In this essay, I would like you to identify and analyze at least two points in the play where truth seems elusive or unexpected, in order to arrive at an argument about the status of truth in the world that The Spanish Tragedy depicts. In what sense, if any, is truth uncovered by the play’s end?
SOME POINTS TO CONSIDER: This list includes some moments that would be worth analyzing; you may suggest others if you prefer. Whichever you choose, your job in this essay is to describe the relation of such scenes and speeches to the attitude that The Spanish Tragedy takes toward the possibility of knowing the truth and functioning in the world. How do people learn the truth? Is what they learn reliable? Are there instances when the truth remains unknowable? What happens to human beings who have to live in a world without truth?
- the subplot of Alexandro and Villuppo
- the discovery of letters
- significant whispers that we can’t hear
- Hieronimo’s play
- Hieronimo’s final gesture
FORMAT FOR WRITING PAPERS IN ENG 4150: Write a traditional academic paper with an introduction, a strong thesis, textual evidence that you analyze and evaluate in support of the thesis, and a conclusion that does not repeat what you’ve just written but rather suggests its general significance. As evidence for your assertions, quote a few lines to demonstrate how choice of words and management of phrasing help us assess the problem of truth. Try to write a draft and then return to it a day or two later, to test the strength of your argument and to be sure that the paper you wrote agrees with the thesis your originally proposed. Please consult the Check List for Essay on matters of form.
A SENSE OF AUDIENCE: Don’t imagine that you’re writing the paper for the teacher. Your reader is someone who has read the texts you will be discussing without having thought much about them. Therefore, you will not need to give extended plot summaries and it will not be useful to spend your first paragraph making generalizations about the texts. Be sure to create a title for your essay that gives sufficient information so that your hypothetical reader will understand what you are writing about and want to read on. Overly vague titles like “Out of the Blue,” for example, don’t tell the reader very much.
