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2. Based on the dialog above, please explain Medea’s strategy of gaining support from Aigeus and her characteristic in the perspective of female subject in Greek tragedies.

1)At first, she cringes before Aigeus with humble words and tries to earn Aigeus’ sympathy, later, she promises to satisfy his desire, because she knows what he is really lack of and his eagerness to have children.

2)In Euripides’play Medea she is a woman scorned, rejected by her husband Jason and seeking revenge.The Nurse compares her to great forces of nature and different animals. She holds great power (forces of nature), she relies on her basic animal-like instincts and emotions ( bulls and lions).

Some critics think Medea is a dichotomy of male and female.Medea does not fit into the mold that conforming to Athenian philosophy. She is very intelligent and skillful, especially, in the eyes of Euripides’ audiences, she has some trait of masculinity. she uses that cunning to manipulate

men, which is not approved by Athenian audience.There is also the paradox of how she chooses murder. She poisons the princess, which is seen as a feminine way, yet kills her children in cold blood, which is more masculine. She also shows a strong maternal love to he children,Yet in the end she kills her children as a revenge.

Despite her cruelty, she also feels ashamed of loving Jason and of murdering her brother.

6. Why did Immanuel Kant call his philosophical explorations on human being’s reasons “a Copernican Revolution” in philosophy? Please explain the significance of Kant’s universalism in forming the western modern subject. You my want to give your explanation in consideration of the relation among science, philosophy and religion in Europe in the 18th century.

Copernicus made a subversive presumption that earth circle around the sun. Inspired by him, Kant subvert the thinking and proposed that objective has to conform to the priori cognition of subjective(knowledge) instead of the converse. Which means, all the knowledge come from sense experiences. When we accept the sense experiences, we have a series of structure and cognitive forms.It includes our sense experiences,On the other hand, we can

process these materials of knowledge through our priori cognitive

forms.Through this apriorism, Kant explains and solves the universality and necessity of science and knowledge.

Kant distinguishes between a priori and a posteriori cognitions and between analytic and synthetic judgments. a posteriori is the knowledge we gain from experience while a priori is what we can know independent of experience. All analytic judgments are a priori, since they consist simply in the analysis of concepts and do not appeal to experience. Synthetic judgments, on the other hand, can be either a apriority or a posteriori.

In space and time, it’s not things in themselves that we meet with in experience, but pure intuitions that help us structure our sensations. The significance of Kant’s universalism in forming the western modern subject: Development of human knowledge and cognizance; Displacement of God from the center of the universe and the consequent “disenchantment of the world”; The antithesis of language and form; World as a representation because we can never know.

7. Please explain the importance of solipsism in early modern novels. You may want to elaborate the topic from studying examples in some early novels.

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. Solipsism holds that knowledge out one’s mind is unsure. This motif is reflected in modern novels. Becoming a modern subject means losing the ultimate telos as provided by god;

To be subjected to the control of and alienated by a growing social

institution based on science and technology; To be severed from the ethical ties, and To struggle for identifications from the community.

the first great novel of the world literature stands at the beginning of the time when the Christian god began to forsake the world, when man became lonely and could find meaning and substance only in his own soul, whose home was nowhere. So the Protagonists in modern novel are self-conscious and developing, and its objective is witnessing the power of individuals. Robinson Crusoe is such a representative novel.

The story connotes the issue faced by all human beings, such as yearning for freedom, heroism, independence and courage for shouldering the

responsibilities. His strong wills and adventurous spirit are necessary for a nation. Robinson’s self-possessed optimism encourages us to embrace future with expectation and faith.

Therefore, this modern novel is immersed with the motif of solipsism.

8. In the film Dans la Maison, there are two scenes in which Germain, the middle-school teacher suddenly appears in his student Claude’s account about his love affair with Ester and demands revisions from the latter’s narration. How do you like the function of this intertwinement between the film’s reality and fiction? Based on your analysis, please explain the relations between author and his fictional character in the postmodern conditions.

1) The teacher’s sudden appearance makes the film more dramatic and triggers the audiences’ curiosity whether this scenery is a reality or a fiction weaved by Claude. The mentor Germain’s intrusion and demands revision seem to be the catcher in the rye, but in fact, he obscures the border between reality and fiction and finally gets lost. In the process of Claude’s writing through peeking at others’ private life, he plays the role of a catalyst as well as a voyeur.

2) Having witnessed Raffa’s familial harmony, Claude tries to seek a sense of belonging and successfully enters into their house as a math tutor. Impelled by primitive urge, Claude’s desire swells into a furtive yearning for Esther. Claude mocks at the dull middle class, while as an outsider, he is manipulative and destructive, thrilling audiences with his spine chilling smirks and stares. The morbid and abnormal relationships, the audacious and sensual writing and the meta-narration reflect postmodernism’s breaking away from the notions of rationality and absolute truths. What’s funny is that in the end the teacher is also entwined into the fiction as a failure and is cuckolded by Claude like a clown, which taints the movie with black humor.

9. What do you think does The Lottery differ from other early modern novels in its portrayal of characters, narration and plots? What social and historical conditions account for the difference?

1). Ambiguous protagonists:While Jackson reveals her mastery of depicting characters with great details, Both the victim and victimizers she portrayed were vague, dreamlike figures only existing in the readers’ imagination. The tension of the plot: the novel keeps the mob politics in secretuntil the last minute when the villagers start to throw stones at the victim who got the lottery. the readers may feel being fooled by the author.

Pseudo-documentary narration: With its low key, yet rich and proficient narration, the story succeeds in smuggling an unlikely scenario into

American history. The story while clearly suggesting its allegorical nature, acquires its historical meaning, which provoked the anger of the readers. The playful confrontation between the novel’s style and its contents: The idyllic, slumbering and peaceful American country life was suddenly twistedinto cruelty.

2). Postmodernism is related to the coming of the post-industrialization. Surrounded by materials, and the consumption for entertainment becamea life style, people turned to be sensual. Workers were also materialized under the capitalist’s pursuit for the maximum of profits. Finally, the rupture and contradictions between economy and culture caused the spiritual crisis of human being. The second reason is the disillusion of modernism, such as philosophies and scientific theories were incapable of solving modern problems and the destruction of nature caused ecological crisis，which further caused human’s ignorance of spiritual civilization and morality. Third, after the second World War, with the booming of scientific and technological revolution, the old knowledge system became fragmented. This is also the attitude of postmodernism.

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