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This test consists of 5 short answer questions and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. During his introduction in the beginning of this section, what is the only thing that Carr says he knows of Joyce?
2. What two countries are attempting to prevent Lenin's entry to Russia?
3. Who does Gwen leave to tell of her engagement to Tzara?
4. When Cecily finally lashes out at Carr, she says Marx warns the worker against all of the following groups but which?
5. After what French writer do the Dadaists name their Cabaret at the Meierei Bar?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
The play opens with a tableau of the Zurich Library. It includes three tables, inhabited by five characters. Write an essay analyzing this opening tableau as a diagram for the artistic and political debate which is to follow. Who dominates each table? What are these dominant figures doing at the beginning of the play? What major movements of the First World War era are represented by these tables?
Essay Topic 2
Write an essay about the character of James Joyce. He is one of the most enigmatic characters in the play, but he has one of the deepest verifiable relationships with Henry Carr. The first half of the essay should concern his art. How does Ulysses fulfill a primal need that he has for literature? What special significance does he assign to the character of Odysseus? The second half should concern his attitude toward money. To what extent does indebtedness and miserliness plague his association with Carr? Is it possible that these attributes may be a creation of Carr the storyteller?
Essay Topic 3
Travesties is a homage and subversion of Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest. He steals certain characters and scenes outright and transposes them to a different era. Write an essay about the connection between these two plays in three parts:
Part 1) The two love interests in The Importance of Being Earnest are also called Cecily and Gwendolen. They, too, have odd caveats for their love. What conditions do the two women give in this play regarding their hearts and how do they reflect a world in flux?
Part 2) Mistaken identity plays a major role in Wilde's farce like in Stoppard's. Why do characters in Travesties assume false identities? What is the meaning of the switched folders? How do both represent something more political than personal?
Part 3) Earnest is a product of the Victorian Era, an era of certitude and stricture. Travesties transposes this story to the Edwardian era, when certainty died in the trenches. How does Stoppard undermine Wilde's pat farce injecting it with the madness of the First World War?
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This section contains 462 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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