BASIC REQUIREMENTS:
Your project will have two parts: a creative piece and a critical reflection about the creative piece
Your creative piece will adapt one scene from one allowed course text
If your chosen course text is a play, your adaptation will be written as a short story without dialogue; if your chosen course text is a short story, you must choose to adapt a scene without dialogue, and your adaptation will be written as a play with dialogue
Your creative piece will be at least 500 words long
Your critical reflection must complete four specific tasks (explained in detail below)
Your critical reflection must incorporate at least one quotation from your chosen course text and one quotation from the lecture videos about that course text
Your essay must use MLA style for citations and for the required works cited page
Your critical reflection must be written in paragraph form; both project parts must be written clearly and be proofread
Your project (both parts) must be submitted as one document to the “Writing Assignment #3” link in the Week 12 module; you are only allowed one submission and one attempt to submit.
Your project is worth 15 points—the creative piece is worth 8 points and the critical reflection is worth 7 points.
Read the rest of this assignment carefully, as it offers in-depth explanations of each of the requirements mentioned above.
Option 1: Adapt an episode or scene from a play as a short story. For this option, you will need to narrow the scene from the play so that you’re able to cover everything in 500 words. If you choose to re-write a play as a short story, you must write the story with a third-person narrator and WITHOUT any dialogue. Third-person narrators tell the story from the outside. For example, Eudora Welty’s story “Petrified Man” has a third-person narrator who tells the story as a non-participant: “Mrs. Fletcher gladly reached over to the lavender shelf….” This narrator is not Mrs. Fletcher, Leota, or anyone else in the story. The requirement that you write as a third -person narrator means that you must focus on description and setting (things plays have very little of). Note: you cannot use Welty’s story for this assignment.
If you choose Option 1, practice transforming the play’s dialogue into narrative form without using dialogue and in the voice of a third-person narrator. For example, if you’re adapting the masque scene in Act 4 scene 1 of The Tempest, you could imagine—and describe—the scenery within which Juno, Ceres, and Iris perform their fertility dance. You could also describe the costumes of these characters as well as those of Ferdinand and Miranda. If you decide to change the time of the play from the distant past to the 21st century, what would the couple wear to their wedding? How would these characters dance? What music would they dance to?
Below are several examples of possible scenes that you could adapt for this project; while you can use the scenes we identify below, you absolutely may use other scenes, as long as they fit the assignment instructions.
The masque featuring Iris, Ceres, and Juno in Act 4, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Until this scene, Prospero has pretended to disapprove of the match between Ferdinand and Miranda (Prospero’s daughter). How do you imagine Prospero’s behavior during the fertility dance (even though he doesn’t speak during the dancing)? Since he orchestrates the masque specifically to express his approval for his daughter’s marriage, how might you describe his inner thoughts in this scene? He is a complex character—sometimes he is harsh, other times he is gentle—so how might you imagine his inner thoughts in a way that captures his complexity?
The scene in Oedipus the King between Oedipus and Teiresias (approximately lines 355-561). The conversation shows Teiresias’s pity and contempt for Oedipus and Oedipus’s growing anger at Teiresias as they insult each other and talk in circles. You might capture a small part of the cryptic back-and-forth exchange by having a third-person narrator describe the facial expressions and body language of the characters; you might also have the narrator contrast the characters’ inner thoughts with what is said/not said in the conversation. How and why is Teiresias reluctant to reveal the truth to Oedipus about his parentage and responsibility for Laius’s murder? Does Oedipus come to distrust Teiresias’s power of prophecy and perhaps all prophecies?
