¶ … shakespeare's, "The Taming of the Shrew" Katherine is made to wed Petruchio in order for a suitor to wed her younger more attractive sister, Bianca. Over the years there have been many adaptations of the play and even though it is a comedy, it still covers serious and all too somber subject matter. Women and their role in society has recently undergone a series of transformations. No longer are they expected to stay at home and raise the young, at least in modern societies. They can work and make their own living. However, in "Taming of the Shrew," Katherine is tranformed into an obedient wife through a series of "abusive" strategies that removed any semblance of resistance she once possessed. This family tension of husband and wife along with the tension of sisters (Katherine's at times harsh treatment of Bianca) provides the means of modifying and altering for changing audiences. As the times change, the adaptations adjust to the level of society and how they view the position of women in it.
As the adaptations go, they change in terms of how the shrew is portrayed in Katherine and how she is tamed. One of the last scenes of the play in where the newly wed husbands make a wager of how obedient their wives are by sending a servant to fetch them and Katherine in the end explaining to the other wives the importance of being obedient, this is altered in the adaptations. The importance of obedience is emphasized in the original play as women back then possessed hardly any rights and were seen as crazy or a "shrew" if they resisted their pre-ordained roles. However as the years went by and women gained more and more rights, the "obedience part of the play differed.
Katherine in the play has always been "hotheaded" and resistant. This does not change. The way in which she resists differs as in the later adaptations she appears less "shrewish" and more ill-tempered. Petruchio begins as a (what some may perceive as abusive) man with an agenda, using reverse psychology to woo her and then refusing her food and clothing when they are married. In the later adaptations the treatment is not as severe and he becomes lustful...
North American Literature of the 20th Century: A Literature of Alienation North American literature of the twentieth century began as a predominantly white male-dominated literature, on the heels of 19th century romantic literary expression, such as within the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, and others. Similarly, in the early decades of the 20th century, American literature was dominated by the likes of William
Psychology and Literature Both psychology and literature explore how people interact with each other. Both psychology and literature explore how prior events affect what follows. Both psychology and literature look at how a person grows, develops and changes over time. However, psychology looks at how events affect what people do and how they act in very precise ways, while literature fictionalizes and supposes what an imaginary person might do. Psychology looks
classroom, regardless of the age of the learner, we realize that there are multiple learning styles and responses to divergent stimuli. The modern pedagogical environment is faced with a number of challenges that are directly related to learning. In fact, as an educational pendulum swings, we find any number of methods that are thought to be new and innovative; yet it is sometimes the tried and true methods that
OCTAVIO PAZ "TRANSPLANTED LANGUAGES" Octavio Paz's 1990 Nobel Lecture accentuated the issue of transplanted languages and the literature that emerged in a transplanted culture. Latin-American and Caribbean literature is good example of the use of transplanted languages since the influence of European and American cultures is quite pronounced. When people migrate from one place to another or are forced to endure foreign rule, the impact on the language is usually the
Courtly love your purchase. COURTLY LOVE AND MIDDLE AGES LITERATURE In this paper, we shall study the tradition of Courtly love in the Middle Ages as reflected by literary works produced in that period. The paper will first focus on what the exact nature of Courtly Love, then proceed to briefly discuss its development and finally take into account the literary works of Middle Ages that contained elements of this tradition. Courtly love
Abbe Prevost's tale of Manon Lescaut performs several different functions at once. It is in part a cautionary story. It is in part a push to create a fully modern sensibility in French literature. It is in part an exploration of the trope of Romanticism. And in all of these things it is partly a story about the New World, for to Prevost, as to other Europeans of his time,
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