Premise: The operating premise for this argument is that Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew challenges our notions of what makes a healthy relationship/partnership.
After selecting a cliché idea of what makes an unhealthy relationship, use the following structure to organize the bust.Use the list provided of “signs of an unhealthy relationship” Download “signs of an unhealthy relationship” as the source of the cliché.
Debunk this cliché. “When you and your partner disagree, they insist you do things their way or leave. It’s their way or the highway, and you don’t have a sense that when you disagree you’ll find a way of coming together.”
Create an effective lead-in and present one of the cliché warning signs about what makes an unhealthy relationship. Cite the source for the cliché. Explain the reasoning behind the warning sign.
Next, make a claim that Shakespeare/Taming busts this idea and shows that the cliché is actually the foundation of a good relationship.
Contextualize the scene from which you will be providing an example. The contextualization is a concise mini summary of the scene, making the dynamics and spirit of the scene clear without wasting space on minutia.
Create a lead-in that introduces the supporting lines for the bust and that suggests the tone with which you want the quoted lines read.
Present quoted lines from any scenes in the comedy. Provide proper parenthetical citation using Dr. Womack’s guidelines for MLA citations of Shakespeare Download Dr. Womack’s guidelines for MLA citations of Shakespeare.
Follow-up by translating and analyzing the quoted lines, explaining how the support busts and refutes the cliché idea offered.
Finally explain the implied “spin” on the cliché relationship warning sign—Shakespeare’s implied carefully nuanced definition implied by the specific example presented.
Cliché Busting:
Even when searching for new insights into the human condition, we unconsciously gravitate towards preset, worn-out “truths,” comforted by a belief in the predictable: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” or “A friend is someone who is always there for you,” or “Hope springs eternal.” Because our regard for these trite truisms is largely subconscious, we may reject ideas that challenge the brain’s locked tabernacle of sacred clichés. Cliché Busting is a three-part process for breaking through an audience’s attachment to formulaic ideas and for helping readers rethink conventional wisdom and consider new meanings of a concept.
Identify:
We all hold many general, “this-is-how-life-is-supposed-to-be” notions; these assumptions may be hidden-even from ourselves. Therefore, the writer’s first step in Cliché Busting is excavating those buried clichés with their attached hackneyed notions. Before uncovering the widely held belief, the writer prepares the audience for the impending debunking by using a lead-in that signals to the reader that the upcoming statement— however familiar or taken for granted as true—is flawed. In A Taste of Others, consider Gail Godwin’s opening lead-in that precedes the standard definition of a friend; Godwin begins downplaying the definition even before presenting it. After identifying the cliché, a writer may offer support of just how well established and prevalent the belief is. For instance, in another example Lauren Slater provides several quick proofs about the pervasiveness of our cultural regard for having self-esteem.
Bust:
After identifying the cliché, the actual bust follows—a deconstruction explaining why the stock concept is limited, worn out, inaccurate, shallow, or fallible. A writer might support the debunking of the definition using outside evidence; in her Cliché Busting, historian Barbara Tuchman provides evidence from an historical source that the calamity of the Black Plague did not, as one might think, bring people together. Or a writer might use Anecdoting (see the Time Warping chapter) to disprove a clichéd idea and reveal its shortcomings.
Redefine:
Once stripped of the old conception, a reader becomes more open to the writer’s finely tuned and newly forged definition. The writer now argues for a revised definition or offers a more unsettling, ambiguous, or complex vision of a concept:
Absence can make one’s heart vulnerable to being stolen; a friend is someone who can betray you; hope fades. A writer may be inspired to a new meaning through current events, a personal experience, or be stimulated by researching the derivation or history of a word in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary).
Start the paper in a similar fashion. “The dutiful first answer seems programmed into us by our meager expectations: “A friend is one who will be there in times of trouble.”
Debunk this cliché. “When you and your partner disagree, they insist you do things their way or leave. It’s their way or the highway, and you don’t have a sense that when you disagree you’ll find a way of coming together.”
Use quotes provided below to support.
In ACT IV.4 Line 192 Petruchio says, “It shall be what o’clock I say it is.” (Use this one in support of the cliche)
Use what is below to debunk the cliche
Kate in ACT V.2
KATE
Fie, fie, unknit that threat ning unkind brow And dart not scornful glances from those eyes To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty, And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee And for thy maintenance; commits his body To painful labor both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience –
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace, Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world, But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms, My mind hath been as big as one of yours, My heart as great, my reason haply more, To bandy word for word and frown for frown.
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare, That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband’s foot, In token of which duty, it he please, My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
PETRUCHIO
Why, there’s a wench! Come on and kiss me, Kate!
CITE:
Psychology Today
Alice Boyes Ph.D. 57 41 Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship Toxic connections ring multiple alarms, if partners can only hear them.
Posted Feb 10, 2015
“Taming of the shrew” Shakespeare. The pelican editions (I believe)
Attached I have the work I did. It was the same concept. Mainly I provide this to give an idea of how I write and what I am looking for.
NOTE:
I tip well when papers are done well.
