Merchant of Venice

Three questions:

What is the source of Antonio’s sadness? Is it resolved by the end of the play? How does the production we will see Friday night frame this melancholy?

What do the men learn about love from the women? How is it different from their initial ideas about love? Look what Portia and Jessica have to say to their lovers. Have the men learned anything? How does Friday's production choose to grapple with this question?

HOw does Portia's character challenge ideas about gender conventions. Is this used sympathetically or for comedic purposes?

Happy New Year.

EPITAPH

*a short piece of poetry or prose lauding a deceased person

*originally used in reference to an inscription over a tomb

*oldest examples appear inscribed on Egyptian sarcophagi 

definition borrowed from encarta.msn.com

EPIGRAM

*a terse, pointed frequently witty observation often composed in verse

*a short satire composed in verse

*originally used in reference to inscriptions on tombs or statues

definition borrowed from encarta.msn.com

ELEGY

*from the Greek elegos

*poem of mourning

*reflection on death or sorrowful circumstances

definition borrowed from oed.com

COUPLET

*two successive lines of verse that form a single unit because they rhyme

*two successive lines of verse that form a complete thought/form a separate stanza

*English couplets tend to be decasyllabic (ten syllables)

*couplets often appear at the conclusion of English sonnets

*HEROIC COUPLET: two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter

*CLOSED COUPLET: meaning and grammatical structure are complete within two lines

definition borrowed from encarta.msn.com

Defined words, not yet mapped.

Copia-"Plenty, a plentiful supply." 'a copious vocabulary.'

Emblem-"A picture of an object (or the object itself) serving as a symbolic representation of an abstract quality, an action, state of things, class of persons."

Ciceronian Style-"imitation of Cicero as a model of Latin style and diction."

Invention-"The finding out or selection of topics to be treated, or arguments to be used."

Encomium-"A formal or high-flown expression of praise."

All definitions taken from the Oxford English Dictionary. 

"The organization that can be discerned in stories about space in everyday culture is inverted by the process that has isolated a system of geographical places. The difference between the two modes of description obviously does not consist in the presence or absence of practices (they are at work everywhere), but in the fact that maps, constituted as proper places in which to exhibit the products of knowledge, form tables of legible results." 

           Quote taken from "The Practice of Everyday Life" (121)  by Michel de Certeau