Andrea Gerber English 2100: Writing About Literature Spring 2012 Instructor: Jessica Camargo Annotated Bibliography

McGinn, Colin. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning behind the Plays. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. 17-34. Print. Colin McGinn, philosophy teacher at University College of London, Oxford, Rutgers University, and more recently University of Miami, provides a brilliant analysis of the major philosophical themes embedded into Shakespeares work. McGinn uses psychological criticism to explain the theme of dream skepticism in the play. It deals, broadly speaking, with the power of fantasy and the interactions of belief and fantasy. Throughout Midsummer, the structure of the play clearly displays multiple events that happen to the humans because of the fairies actions; anything the character experience that seems odd or out of the ordinary, something magical and/or un-explainable is written off as a dream, a figment of their own imaginations. McGinn states that: from now on, the line between sleeping and waking, between dream and reality, will prove permeable and unclear, and insanity will never be far away about the scenes that feature Puck and Oberon adding flower magic to the humans and Titania (respectively,) to make them fall in love with someone else. McGinn uses examples from authors such as Montaigne and Descartes to solidify his examples, giving this novel the ability to help any reader further understand the story of Midsummer. Belsey, Catherine. "Fairy Tales for Grown-ups in A Midsummer Night's Dream." Why Shakespeare? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 85-107. Print. Catherine Belsey, Research Professor of English at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK uses a feminist approach to explain the fairy tales within the story of Midsummer. In this section of her book, Belsey uses Bottoms Dream as the first example of fairy tale, stating that Bottom is not the first mortal man to have been loved by the queen of fairies. She uses the example that Titania promises bottom not only sexual encounter, but a way of life that is rich and romantic beyond the dreams of a working man. Belsey uses the examples of the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer and the play The Faerie Queen to show how the stereotyped female offers up a sexual encounter as her way of sealing the deal and making

a man stay with her. Whilst the women in all three stories have power (all three being fairy queens,) they are still ruled by their man for their need for sex and love. All three women sought love from these men, the only thing they wanted being love in return, posing another stereotype that women are of weaker nature and let their feelings get in the way.

Dent, R. W. "Imagination in A Midsummer Night's Dream." Shakespeare 400; Essays by American Scholars on the Anniversary of the Poet's Birth. By James Gilmer McManaway and William Shakespeare. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964. 115-29. Print. R.W. Dent of the University of California talks of imagination in A Midsummer Nights Dream, using gender studies to explain the tales of love that go on between three sets of lovers: Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius and Titania and Oberon. Dent uses the example that men fluctuate before finally settling down to a constant attachment such as the heroines exhibit from the start. This brings in the gender roles that man goes as he pleases, and it is not necessary for him to settle down, but once a woman had found a man to catch her attraction, she does not settle for anything else, and only wants that man to receive all of her love and affection. It shows that women are weaker than men because they let their emotions get in the way, and this affects them from making decisions due to their blindness from love. Dent also uses the example that in the middle of the play, then, when dotage grows more rampant, so too does imagination. This brings about the fact that men can be jealous of one another, often greedy because of what one man has that another man wants.

To research for this piece of the assignment, I found the class we had in the library to understand the online catalog system to be very helpful. The system can be confusing at first, so it was easy to get lost within links if you werent certain what you were searching for. It was this day when I reserved two pieces of research to put towards this assignment. I consulted help from the OWL English Purdue website that was linked to us in the assignment guidelines as well. I did venture to my own public library, but I did not find any helpful material there, just books of the fiction genre. I found it very difficult to find exactly which topics I was looking to discuss in my annotated bibliography because many books I wanted to check out from the library either had a long wait list or did not have an online preview of the section I was interested in. It would have been much easier to skim through the sections online and see if the book was worth checking out. Im comfortable in finding and using secondary sources, as this is something required throughout multiple classes that I have taken thus far in college, English courses and electives, respectively. Over the course of this assignment, I learned how to work the librarys online catalog with greater efficiency, which I hope will help me in future classes when searching for materials I may need to research.