Finding the Articles Indexes and Databases

• In order to access them you will need to log on from off-campus
• Go to UCSB’s library’s website (www.library.ucsb.edu).
• Click on “off campus login” located in the upper right-hand corner.
• You will be directed to a new page, where you will be asked to enter your UCSBNetId and password.  These are the same as your id and password for your umail account.  Enter these, then click on “login.”
• If you are successful, you will be directed to another page with a list of resources.  Click on “article indexes and databases.”  You will be directed to a very valuable list of “article indexes and databases” through which you can search and from which you can pull resources.

Some Tips

• Try numerous databases
• Try numerous searches
• Be persistent
• Check spelling
• Once you find an article, if you have access to it, scan its bibliography/works cited page for further resources
• Sort results to find the articles you want
• If the full text of the article is not available to you online, check local libraries to see if they have hard copies or electronic editions you can access onsite.
• Familiarize yourself with the database’s peculiarities.  Each database will often have symbols to help you refine your search.  (For example, in some databases, and * will search for variant spelling, so “col*r” will find both “colour” and “color.”)
• Check their “search tips” and “tutorials” for information on how to refine searches.

Research Help

• Go to UCSB’s library’s website (www.library.ucsb.edu).
• At the bottom of the page under “Help and Guidance” click on “Help by Subject.”  This will lead you to the research handbooks compiled by the subject specialists.
• Or click on “Ask a Librarian” under the same column.
• This will lead you to a new webpage.  Click on “Ask a Subject Specialist.”  This will give you access to the contact information of the subject specialists.

Evaluating Web Sources

• What are the author’s credentials?
• What is the author’s potential bias?
• What are the author’s sources?
• Are the sources current?
• Who publishes, supports, backs the website?
• How is content vetted for the website?  Is it peer reviewed?
• Based on your knowledge of the topic, does the website’s information seem reliable?
• See “Resources” below for more sites

Resources (I have links to them on my blog)

• www.hehmeyer.wordpress.com
• “Evaluating and Citing Online Resources.” Transcriptions, Department of English, UC Santa Barbara http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/resources/guides/learning/evaluating_citing.asp
• “Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL).”  Department of English, Purdue University http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
• “Voice of the Shuttle.” UC Santa Barbara http://vos.ucsb.edu/

Citation Manager for Word (for keeping that working bibliography)

• Look under “toolbox” on your toolbar, there should be a citation option
• Under “view” click on “citations”

I. Preliminary research

Although we are not asking you do any kind of comprehensive research…yet, you will need to include a summary or list of sources you might use.  Furthermore, in order to develop your research questions and to explain your paper’s contribution to a larger conversation (whether scholarly or political), you will need to have some familiarity with what people are saying about your topic.  And by “people” I do not mean just the popular press, but academics and policy wonks too.

For this reason, it would be a good idea to set aside some time this week to do preliminary research on your topic.

Remember you don’t have to read everything now, or even all of anything.  Skim articles, read abstracts, and look up book reviews on key works.  Read broadly now, not in depth, so that you can identify the key resources you will need to return to and so you get a general context for your topic.

II. Online databases and indexes

Although I will be giving a more thorough introduction to electronic resources available to you this Friday, I want to introduce you to some valuable online databases available through UCSB’s library.

Go to UCSB’s library’s website (www.library.ucsb.edu).  Click on “off campus login” located in the upper right-hand corner.  You will be directed to a new page, where you will be asked to enter your UCSBNetId and password.  These are the same as your id and password for your umail account.  Enter these, then click on login.  If you are successful, you will be directed to another page with a list of resources.  Click on “article indexes and databases.”  You will be directed to a very valuable list of “article indexes and databases” through which you can search and from which you can pull resources.

Spend some time on this site exploring different databases.  JSTOR (under J obviously) is a great one to start with.

III. Other resources: bibliographies and reference works

Consult the bibliographies of books and articles.  If one author keeps popping up, then that author might be pretty important.  You might want to read some of her articles or books (or at least some summaries for now).

Finally, don’t forget about reference books.  An entry in a good specialized encyclopedia (like an encyclopedia of contemporary politics or political philosophy) can give you a strong introduction to a complicated subject and will often include a useful bibliography.  (Again, I’m talking about specialized encyclopedias, not wikipedia and not even Encyclopedia Britannic.)

Your essay can take several forms.  First, if you’re familiar with the play, you can discuss how the play has been adapted by this particular production.  You should discuss the choices the actors, director, set designer etc. have made. Second, you could compare this play to some of the plays we have read. Perhaps you could compare Viola or Olivia to Cleopatra or Isabella.  Be sure to make an argument with the comparison.  Perhaps you can tell me what you have learned from seeing this character or this play.  Third, talk about the play.  Offer a close reading or anaylsis of the production.  Again, be sure to offer an argument.

You will want to focus your comparison to something manageable given the paper’s length.  Because talking about everything would be too much, focus on one aspect of the production (the lighting, a single character, one scene, music, etc).  Although I am not expecting the same kind of thesis as I would in a close-reading paper, I would like your paper to make an argument.  This argument should be analytical and not evaluative (don’t tell me that the lighting was good, tell me what it did and why that was important).

Prompt: Focusing on the character of Imogen or that of the Queen, think about how these women change or are changed during the play.  In your paper, persuasively argue for the significance of that change.

In Cymbeline we have two central women: the abused Imogen and the abusive Queen.  In some ways these women are foils to each other, but in other ways they parallel each other.  Critics have noted that even as the Queen’s malevolent influence must be banished, Imogen’s independence must be tamed.  As Pisanio says, “You must forget to be a woman; change/ Command into obedience, fear and niceness” (III.iv.155-156).  In your essay you will focus on one of these two characters and explain the significance of the changes they undergo or more broadly the significance of what happens to them.  You will not simply tell me what happens to them, but why it happens.

This “why” can take many forms, but it should not focus on the exigencies of the plot.  Imogen dresses as a page.  Your “why” should not be that she must disguise herself to escape.  I am looking for a “why” that moves beyond the plot or that interprets the plot in an interesting way.

Ask yourself questions about these women.  What do these women represent in the play?  What is their relationship to power?  As Janet Adelman argues: “Cymbeline begins with the loss of masculine identity through excessive trust in women.  Cymbeline ends with the recovery of male authority through distrust of women and the exorcising of their power.” (Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest).  Do you agree? You may also look at these women on the individual or psychological level.  Do they need to change inwardly in some manner?  Why?

It may be to your advantage to focus on one scene closely.  You do not have to discuss everything that happens to these women, but may choose instead to analyze one transformation in depth.  Remember your paper is graded not just on the claims you make, but how persuasively you support those claims.

Prompt: Looking at the scenes surrounding and including the battle of Actium in act III, I want you to tell me why Cleopatra flees the battle.  You must convincingly support your interpretation of Cleopatra’s flight with evidence from the text.

In III.10, Cleopatra flees from the battle of Actium and Antony follows.  According to Antony’s men, she flees just when Antony’s forces seem to be winning, and hence her retreat causes their defeat.  They scold Antony for following her, insisting that by doing so he has violated his manhood and his honor.  In approaching your paper, I would like you to be skeptical of these views.  You do not have to reject them, but realize that they are merely one perspective.  Cleopatra offers little explanation for her actions, and we should also be skeptical of what she says.  The evidence from the play is all report.  We don’t see the flight.  Cleopatra ‘retreat’ is a Shakespearean “unscene,” a scene that occurs offstage but is described for us onstage.  Hence you must navigate through these reports carefully, reading between the lines, and giving good reasons for trusting or not trusting each character’s claims.

Actium was the decisive battle between Antony and Octavian.  Octavian’s victory secured his control over what was to become the Roman Empire, but was still nominally the Roman Republic.  As a result, the battle occupied a central place in the early propaganda of the Empire.  One of its most famous literary depictions is in the description of the battle on Aeneas’ shield in Virgil’s Aeneid, the great Roman epic written during Octavian’s reign (see above).  In his depiction of Actium, Virgil associates Antony closely with Cleopatra and Egypt in order to transform what was a civil war into a war of foreign conquest, thus masking the civil violence that brought Octavian to power with a more acceptable image of military conquest over unruly mob of non-Romans – a war between West and East (see David Quint’s Epic and Empire for this argument in greater detail).  Enshrined at the heart of one of the great western epics that (arguably) justified Roman Empire and Roman expansion, Actium became as much an ideological battleground as a historical one.

While writing your paper, it may be usefully to consider what this battle stands for, not in 31 B.C. when it was fought, not in the Aeneid, nor in the early 17^th Century when this play was first performed, but in the play itself.  Consider not just the personal relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, but how the play distinguishes Egypt from Rome, and how this distinction might affect the way we should read this battle.

Remember, I am looking for a convincing argument.  There are many plausible answers to this question, but your interpretation needs to be convincing.  In other words, you must support your interpretation of Cleopatra’s actions with analysis of evidence from the text.

• III.i arguably serves as a prologue to the storm episode (which alternates between scenes on the heath and scenes inside Gloucester’s house).  II.4 just ended with Cornwall stating: “Shut up your doors…Come out o’th’ storm,” as he exits Kent and a Gentleman enter and Act III begins with this exchange:
  
  Kent: Who’s there besides foul weather?Gent: One minded like the weather, most unquietly.

• The scene opens with a personification of the weather (Kent says it’s a “who”) and then we find that the weather mirrors the interior feelings of the gentleman “minded like the weather.”What do you make of this exchange and how does it respond to the end of Act II?  How does it set us up for the rest of Act III?
• Kent then tells the Gent. of the impending conflict between Albany and Cornwall (l.21) and the landing of French forces at Dover.  Indeed each act has begun with a reminder of this conflict (cf. I.i.1-2 & II.i.10-11).  What dimension does this add to the storm scene? If we want a topical allusion: Albany = reference to Scotland, Cornwall = southern England.  James was king of both England and Scotland, and sought a Union between the two, which he never achieved.  Thus we can say that this play is about Britain, not just England (we’ll see this again with Cymbeline).
• Throughout the Act, we alternate between scenes of heath and home.  At the start we are set up to think of the heath as wild, exposed, dangerous, a place of exile; meanwhile, the home is a place of civilization, warmth, safety, and family.  What happens to this division between heath and home by the end of the act?

III.3 & III.5 & III.7

• What does the subplot to the storm do for us?  Dramatically, thematically?
• In III.5 Edmund speaks of a conflict that lies at the heart of the play between “Nature” and “Loyalty.”  What is this conflict?
• Why does Shakespeare climax this Act with the blinding in III.7?  (It’s a powerful moment of onstage violence.)  What does it do to the division between heath and home.
• Why does Gloucester keep reminding us that he is the host?  What theme does this develop?
• Why have the servant rebel against Cornwall here?  Why have the servants sympathetic to Gloucester?
• Regan, not Cornwall, kills the servant.  Might this suggest an inversion of gender roles?  Does it say something about Regan?  What?
• How does Gloucester’s predicament and punishment parallel Lear’s transformation?

III.2-III.4-III.6

• The heath scenes echo (intentionally or not) two scenes from the Bible.  The proud King Nebuchadnezzar who must learn humility before God and God’s questioning of Job.  We don’t have to see an allusion in Lear to these scenes (though surely Shakespeare would have known of them), but can they shed any light on our understanding of what is happening to Lear and what must happen to Lear?

“Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.” Daniel 4:33

And of course Job, for me this passage where God questions Job is particularly resonant: 38:34-38: “Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? 35 Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? 36 Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the heart? 37 Who can number the clouds in wisdom? Or who can stay the bottles of heaven, 38 when the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together?”

• How does Lear think of himself in III.2?  He seems to be commanding the weather!  He even accuses it of betraying him by siding with his daughters!  What?  Is this just his big ego?  If so, does this change in the course of the Act?
• How does this compare to the Gent’s description of him: “Strives in this little world of man to outscorn/ The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain”  (III.i.10-11).
• Look especially at III.4, what insights does Edgar provide Lear?  What is Lear’s relationship to the fool here?  What does the fool represent?  (Note the fool arrives when Cordelia leaves, and he will leave before she returns…so they serve perhaps as parallel or mirror (reverse) images of each other.)
• Edgar provides the final comment on the heath scenes in the soliloquy III.6.101-114?  What is his realization?  How does he change? What is his view of pain and suffering and why does his differ from Lear’s?  Why is Lear “alone” in his suffering?

Prompt: Paying close attention to the sequence of scenes and their interaction with each other, offer a persuasive analysis of the storm episode (Act III) that situates it in the larger context of the play.  In short what is the effect and purpose of this episode?

The storm episode lies (literally) at the heart of Lear.  It is one of the play’s most famous moments.  A proper understanding of it helps us reflect on the play as a whole.  I am asking you to analyze this sequence of scenes in depth and to offer your interpretation of them.  Your analysis should examine the structure of the episode as well as its language and action.

You do not have to write extensively about all six scenes.  Instead you may choose to focus on one scene or on one thread woven through all or several of them.

In order to make your argument you do need to have a sense of this episode’s relationship to the play as whole.  Consider in particular what images and themes are developed here.  You do not have to (nor do I want you to) dwell at length on the rest of the play.

I know that the storm episode is a “turning point,” and I know the familiar argument that the storm manifests the turmoil inside Lear.  These ideas can be good starting points and could serve as the opening sentence of your essay, but neither is a thesis.  If you were to pursue one of these ideas, then you might consider how exactly it is a turning point and why make this scene (with this language) the turning point.  If the storm manifests Lear’s inner turmoil, what is that inner turmoil, and what realization or understanding does he reach in the course of the scenes (if he reaches any realization at all)?  In short, you need to be more specific.

Remember, your interpretation must be persuasive, and in order to be persuasive it should refer to the text.  A writer could use a storm to represent anger, confusion, turmoil, the wrath of God, depression, etc.  So your analysis should not simply rely on the idea of “The Storm” and what it means to you, rather your analysis should see how the storm is described in the play.

2.)    Mariana – Although she initially pleads for Angelo’s life, she quickly falls silent, and says nothing when Angelo demands his own execution?  How does she respond to Angelo’s demand and his eventual pardon?

3.)    Angelo – Silently receives his pardon, though he has just demanded his own death.  How should he respond?

4.)    Barnardine – The Duke also spares his life, but we hear nothing from him.  How does this wonderful drunkard take it?  Would he even notice?

5.)    Juliet – Juliet is brought on stage at the end to witness Claudio’s unmuffling, but she too says nothing.  Does she already know that Claudi’s alive?

For more information see the following useful article:

Edward L. Rocklin, ‘Measured Endings: How Productions from 1720 to 1929 Close Shakespeare’s Open Silences in Measure for Measure’, Shakespeare Survey 53 (2000), 213-232