Molly Franklin English 2100: Writing About Literature Spring 2013 Instructor: Jessica Camargo Annotated Bibliography

Comtois, M. E. "The Comedy Of The Lovers In A Midsummer Night's Dream." Essays In Literature 12.1 (1985): 15. Supplemental Index. Web. 20 Apr. 2013. M. E. Comtois, a renounced literary critic, analyzes the drama A Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare with a formalist approach. He criticizes the drama by looking closely at the entire story as well as individual elements of the story. Comtois argues that the play is not primarily about the lovers. Comtois believes that the lovers are only a small piece of a four part madrigal of nobility, lovers, artisans, and fairies. He notes that for the first three acts, the lovers, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander, act only as victims. The first act, the four lovers are victims of Athenian authority. In the second act, the four lovers are victims of their own adolescence and childish ways of thought. The third act depicts them as victims of enchantment. Comtois elaborates that the three lovers are brought before the Athenian court unwillingly as a display of the authority of the Athenian rule. He says that Shakespeares focus on personal dilemmas is what allows the comic dimension in the drama. To elaborate, Comtois says the lovers reflect the wide discrepancy between those who master and those who are mastered by love. Next, Comtois discusses the action occurring in the second act and how that action relates to the idea of the adolescent idea of love. He first points out Shakespeare has fragmented his perspective onto the lovers private affairs into three units: a twosome, a threesome, and a solo, to show that nothing can divert or vary the content of adolescent responses to love. Basically saying that Shakespeare covered all the bases to prove his point.

Fleissner, Robert F. "Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream." Explicator 55.2 (1997): 72. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. Robert F. Fleissner briefly analyzes William Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream with both formalist criticism and new historicism approaches. Fleissner chooses to focus on the title of the play. He seems to believe that the word midsummer in the title of A Midsummer Nights Dream is a euphemism for mad summer. He supports his argument by noting other critics with similar arguments and looking at other works of William Shakespeare. Fleissner

elaborates in reexamining these verdicts, we can find that several of them do appear to have a little something in commonnotably the theme of madness of some sort. Fleissner also points out that the setting of A Midsummer Nights Dream is supposed to be the month of May according to the text but May is not in midsummer, May is in early summer. He notes that the 24th of June is celebrated as Midsummers Eve in England and that Shakespeare very well could have written this play for that specific purpose and perhaps the mention of the month of May is simply a reference to the time frame in which it was written. He then noted the ful moon that would have occurred during the same time frame and the lunacy it may have been believed to cause by Shakespeare perhaps also a factor in his decision for the title and the setting of the play. He uses this to support his idea that Shakespeare intended the title to act as a pun. Fleissner uses the Duke Theseus speech on the relation of the lunatic, the lover, and the poet to support his theories. He also elaborates on the play on names such as that of Snout and Robbin Goodfellow.

Garner, Shirley Nelson. "A Midsummer Night's Dream 'Jack Shall Have Jill;/Nought Shall Go Ill'." Women's Studies 9.1 (1981): 47. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. Shirley Nelson Garner of the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis Department of English analyzes Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream with a gender approach. She uses a close reading of some of Titanias lines in Act II to make an argument. These lines read Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. Garner argues The movement of the play towards ordering the fairy, human, and natural worlds is also a movement towards satisfying mens psychological needs, as Shakespeare perceived them, but its cost is the disruption of womens bonds with each other. She is referring to the bond that was broken between Helena and Hermia because of Demetrius lust for Hermia. Later, she brings a very interesting observation to view when analyzing both Titanias and Pucks version of the young Indian boys origins. Garner notes that from Pucks perspective, the child was stolen from an Indian King, clearly ignoring any connection; Garner infers perhaps a homosexual relationship, between Titania and the Indian boys mother. This suggests that patriarchal and heterosexual values have been threatened. Garner later takes note of the

relationship between Hippolyta and Theseus as well as the origin of their relationship. She elaborates on the fact that Hippolyta was not courted; Theseus won her in a battle in the Amazons and brought her back with the intention of marrying her. Garner elaborates on the hostility that Hippolyta must have as she was essentially taken from her home, without her consent; by a strange man she had never met before and told that the two of them were to be married in the upcoming months. Garner points out examples of this hostility in the text when Hippolyta blatantly sides with Hermia and Lysander against Eugeus and Theseus.

Reflection To complete this assignment, I consulted the librarys online catalog and databases. I couldnt find any available books to use so all three of my annotations came from a database. All three are scholarly articles. I found the bar along the side of the page the most helpful to me when I was searching for sources. I found the catalog to be the least helpful because of the lack of books the could be used to support one of the criticisms in relation to A Midsummer Nights Dream and the plethora of students in our class trying to check all of them out making it nearly impossible for me to get one. I feel very comfortable finding secondary sources at this point in time. Again, I used my strategy of simply sitting down and getting the assignment finished rather than working on it in bits and pieces. I think this strategy will continue to help me to be successful in all of my classes as long as I can continue to reserve enough time to complete all of my assignments.