Jonathan P. Lamb's Courses

Essay 3
Analysis of a Shakespearean ‘Translation’

For this 5-7 page essay, you will find a ‘text’ in contemporary culture, argue for its status as a Shakespearean ‘translation,’ and analyze the argument(s) it impresses on its audience. The second and third tasks in the preceding sentence will take place in tandem: even as you demonstrate how the text counts as a translation (a task that will ask you to think rigorously about what it means for something to be a translation in the first place), you will describe what argument the text makes, how it makes that argument, and why it makes that argument in that way. Your audience for the essay will be readers familiar with the text in question and with Shakespeare’s plays generally.

Cast as wide a net as you wish when considering what text to write about. The field is vast: television shows, movies, music, commercials, books, webpages, advertisements, architecture, places (e.g., restaurants), individuals (e.g., celebrities), visual art, and many more phenomena count as texts. Your purpose is less to find something quick and easy and more to find a text that provokes the sustained discussion implicit in the essay’s parameters.

As we’ve discussed in class, there’s no single way for a text to be a Shakespearean translation. Perhaps it takes up similar subject matter, as in Gilligan’s Island and The Tempest. Perhaps it engages similar issues or questions, as in Harry Potter and Hamlet. Perhaps it involves similar situations or structures, as in love songs and the sonnets. Writing the essay will involve explaining—arguing, in fact—how the text counts as a translation of Shakespeare.

At the same time, you must also take up the question of what argument the text makes for its audience, and how the text’s status as a Shakespearean translation relates (or doesn’t relate) to that argument. What does the text persuade its audience to do or think? What kind of argument does it make? To what end? What ideas does it impress on its audience? How does the Shakespearean text(s), idea(s), language, character(s), or situation(s) the text translates fit into that rhetorical scheme? Does it help or undermine the text’s argument? Does it allow us to perceive the text’s argument in a different way? What does it tell us about the cultural basis of the text’s argument?

As you address these questions, you should consider the following aspects of the text:
• the intended audience
• the cultural context in which the text was made
• where and when the text becomes public and how that fact is significant
• the reasons and evidence offered in support of the text’s argument (logos)
• the chain of reasoning by which the text makes its argument (also logos)
• the appeals to the audience's emotions or to the ‘author’s’ credibility (pathos and ethos)
• what is at stake in the text’s argument (what is to be gained or lost in it?)

A good thesis statement will encapsulate and combine the essay’s two main tasks of (1) showing how the text is a Shakespearean translation and (2) analyzing the text’s argument. For example, a clear, strong thesis will not simply state that “Gilligan’s Island takes up the same religious questions as The Tempest” or that “Gilligan’s Island offers its viewers a humorous though ultimately bleak outlook on the compass of human knowledge” but that “Gilligan’s Island takes up the same epistemological questions as The Tempest, yet despite its humor, the show offers viewers the same bleak assessment of human knowledge as does Shakespeare’s play.”

Format: The essay should be typed, double-spaced with 12-point Times New Roman font and one-inch margins all around. Be sure to place quoted text within quotation marks and type your name, the date, and a title at the top of the first page.