Agenda:

Quiz
Plot Review
Assignment 1
Literary Terms
Discussion of play: gender, race, spectacle

Quiz 2

1.  What body part does Titus give up to save his sons’ lives?

2.  Titus does not get his sons returned to him.  What does he get instead?

3.  Name a method Lavinia uses to communicate what happened in the woods (a couple of answers are possible).

4.  Why is it evident that Tamora’s baby is Aaron’s?

5. What does Tamora want to happen to the baby?

Bonus: What is a “gibbet”?

Literary Terms

Ellipses:
Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep / Or if not so, thy noble heart to break (3.1.59-60).
Such withered herbs as these / Are meet for plucking up, and therefore mine (3.1.177-78)
The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody:
Even so mayst thou the giddy men of Rome. (4.4.83-87)

Anastrophe
A goodly humor is it not my lords? / As who would say, in Rome no justice were (4.4.19-20)

Circumlocution
Terras Astraea reliquit:
Be you remember’d, Marcus, she’s gone, she’s fled.
Sirs, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall
Go sound the ocean, and cast your nets;
Happily you may catch her in the sea;
Yet there’s as little justice as at land:
No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it;
‘Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,
And pierce the inmost centre of the earth:
Then, when you come to Pluto’s region,
I pray you, deliver him this petition;
Tell him, it is for justice and for aid. (4.3.4-15)

Foils

From last class:

Women starkly divided between super chaste and super sexually loose

• Reassuring binary where others are falling apart
• Less interest in full / complex female characters
• Anxiety about female sexuality

• Note no wives other than Tamora in play.  Where’s Mrs. Andronicus?  How did Titus manage a 25:1 male / female birth ratio?
• Why this anxiety?
  • Lineage: “Nay, he is your brother stamped by the surer side / Although my seal be stamped in his face (4.2.127-28).
  • Sexual weakness or pleasure vs. manly toughness: “Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years / And led my country’s strength” (1.1.192-93).
  • Power of charm: “Words more sweet and yet more dangerous” (4.4.90).
  • But: it takes two to tango. And everyone loses limbs.

What about race?  Does Shakespeare make distinctions between white Roman / white Goth and black Moor, or does he blur them?
See 4.2.67-73; 88-89; 2.1.1-18

After class notes

Literary terms and concepts:

Words that contain multiple and opposite meanings.

• Denotation vs. Connotation
• Denotation = Dictionary definition of a word
• Connotation = Culturally specific associations with or emotional colorings of a word (e.g. cheap vs. inexpensive; car vs. automobile; “dear leader” (used sincerely in N. Korea?; literally means beloved leader, but we all know culturally that in the US the term is always used to mean a tyrant who rules through a cult of personality, or who demands people love him when they really don’t–e.g. often used as a name for President Obama by people who hate him).
• Prevalence of words with a range of or even opposite meanings.  Click here for examples and explanation.
  

Racist language in Titus:

• Examples: Fly episode; nurse
• But: does Aaron behave like others in the play?
• Others are cruel, e.g. irony that Tamora wants the baby killed because it’s black.  What does that say about the morals of the white Goth woman?
• Others also want to express themselves through their children, e.g. Titus’ 25 sons; Tamora’s begging for her son’s life.