David Simon described his television series The Wire as "Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak.&quot

1. In a 2007 interview, David Simon described his television series The Wire as "Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak." We might

very well say the same of another recent HBO series, Game of Thrones. Examine this notion of "Greek tragedy for the new millennium" with

reference to Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and any aspect of either The Wire or Game of Thrones you choose. Focus on a single scene, a particular

character, a notable episode, or either series as a whole. Episodes of The Wire can be found here; episodes of Game of Thrones can be found here.

2. "An axe-age, a sword-age, shields will be gashed: there will be a wind-age and a wolf-age before the world is wrecked." How might the

Norse myth of Ragnarok inform or shape our understanding of Beowulf?

3. "Hamlet is a play about theatricality," the critic Harold Bloom has argued, "and not about revenge." Evaluate the merit of

Bloom’s provocative statement.

4. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft writes, "A great proportion of the misery, that wanders, in

hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents." How might this quotation relate to Shelley’s novel

Frankenstein?

5. What specific images does T. S. Eliot use to communicate the speaker’s isolation and frustration in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

Which of these images are most effective? Why?

6. In a 1931 essay, Samuel Beckett wrote the following: "Habit is the ballast that chains the dog
to his vomit. Breathing is habit. Life is habit. Rarely does one experience the moment when the
boredom of living is replaced with the suffering of being.? Examine this quotation with reference