MLA Guidelines



On Phaedrus and Wings of Desire

Beauty, Love and Rhetoric: Essay One

“Well, then, isn’t the rhetorical art, taken as a whole, a way of directing the soul by means of speech, not only in the lawcourts and on other public occasions but also in private” – Socrates (Plato 261a).

“How should I live? Maybe that's not the question. / How should I think?” – Marion (Wings of Desire).

“After death, when they [lovers] have grown wings and become weightless, they have won the first of three rounds in these, the true Olympic Contests. There is no greater good than this that either human self-control or divine madness can offer a man” – Socrates (256b).

“Other wings will grow in place of the old ones. /Wings that will at last astound me”

– Damiel (Wings of Desire).

Two copies of a complete and polished five-page draft are due Tuesday, September 23rd. Note: If you miss class, are late for class, have fewer than five full pages, or do not have the draft with you at the beginning of class, your paper grade will be reduced by a full letter grade. Your final draft must also include a sixth Works Cited page.

The goal of this paper is either to use Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire as a lens for looking into Plato’s Phaedrus or to use Plato’s Phaedrus as a lens for looking into Wings of Desire. You can approach any aspect of these works you find interesting as long as you use one work to illuminate your analysis of the other work.

The similarities between these two works abound and provide fertile ground for extended analyses of one another. Both works focus on the tension between the eternal and unchanging on the one hand and our ephemeral, finite human existence on the other. The ways they both describe this tension helps them to reveal what they think about the experience of beauty and the experience of love. You might, for instance, examine the passage in which the angel Damiel longs “to be excited not only by the mind, but by a meal. By the line of a neck, by an ear”; he even longs “to feel how it is to take off your shoes under the table ...” (Wings of Desire). Or you might offer an analysis of the passages in which Socrates describes the “place beyond heaven” and the way one remembers and is driven mad by that divine vision when he sees a beautiful person: “a fear comes over him like those he felt at the earlier time; then he gazes at him with the reverence due a god” (247c & 251a).

In both Phaedrus and Wings of Desire, we have souls losing and gaining wings. You could write about this process by focusing on one of the works and using the other for purposes of comparison and contrast. You might, perhaps, focus a paper on explaining what Damiel means when, after he has become human, he tells his friend that he will grow “new wings in place of the old ones,” wings that will “at last astound me” (Wings of Desire).

Another approach would be to use what the old storyteller from Wings of Desire says about stories to analyze the discussion between Socrates and Phaedrus about the effect of rhetoric on the soul. The old storyteller is surely right to say that we need a narrative to help us tell the story of our lives; he goes so far as to say people need a storyteller “more than anything in the world” (Wings of Desire). We can also see how using stories to reflect on the human condition allows Plato in his dialogue (and Socrates in his second speech) and Wim Wenders in his film to take some poetic licenses. You might focus on one of these storytellers and speculate about what the work is trying to tell us about who we are and what life is about. The old storyteller suggests that he wants to tell a story that reveals humanity in general (“Everyman”): “Tell me, muse, the storyteller ... he who has been thrust to the edge of the world ... both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal Everyman” (Wings of Desire). How is Wim Wenders’ story an attempt to describe our humanity, the importance of our relationships with others, the nature of beauty, love? How has Plato?

As you develop the structure of your essay, keep in mind the experience that you will be giving the readers of your essay. Make editorial choices that stimulate your readers’ anticipation, choices that make us want to read further. Think about what sorts of realizations you want your readers to have and how you can best bring us there. Think about how you can bring all of your lines of thought together for a satisfying conclusion and a unified essay.

It will be helpful to ground your reasoning in quotes from the readings. Outside research is not recommended, but if you use it be sure to cite it properly. (Be sure to introduce and explain your quotes; do not assume that the meaning you want your readers to grasp from a quote is transparent.)

Audience: We are a discourse community. That is, the audience you will be addressing for this paper (and in all papers for this class) is our class (just as it is for our on-line and in-class discussions). You may assume that your readers are familiar with the required texts as well as our on-line and in-class discussions

All papers for this class will adhere to the Modern Language Association’s conventions. You will be expected to employ these conventions when you write papers for English and other humanities courses. If you have particular questions, please ask.

Some Basics of MLA Format:

Print your paper on standard, white 8.5 x 11-inch paper. The text of your paper should be double-spaced. Use a legible font like Times New Roman – avoid bloated fonts like courier. Use either an 11 or 12 point font. Leave only one space after periods or other punctuation marks. Set the margins of your document to 1 inch on all sides. Indent the first line of a paragraph one half-inch (five spaces or press tab once) from the left margin. Create a header with your last name in the upper right hand corner one-half inch from the top and flush with the right margin. Just to the right of your last name, number all pages consecutively. Do not make a title page for your paper. In the upper left-hand corner of the first page, list your name, double space, your professor's name (Dr. Ryan McBride), double space, the course (Writing 263), double space, and the date. Double space again and center the title. Don't underline your title or put it in quotation marks. Write the title in Title Case, not in all capital letters. Double space between the title and the first line of the text. The last sheet of the paper will be a Works Cited sheet in which you will list all cited works in MLA format.

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