English 2800 (DG24A)

This is another simple one:  Write me 1-2 paragraphs explaining which text you’d want to write a five page paper on and why.  This is going to help us gear up to our one formal essay, and I want you to think of your topic.  So, just brainstorm a little and talk about what most interests you out of what we’ve studies thus far.

Due 10/15 @7pm.

Simple: Is Medea a tragic hero?  Your answer in 200 – 500 words.  As usual, one quotation is required.

Due 10/1 @ 5pm

Write 300 – 500 words in response to one of the following study questions:

1. If Odysseus had free will, how did his choices affect his journey home?

1. Compare and contrast a specific example of the double standard between the sexes in The Odyssey and double standards that exist in contemporary times.

1. What is the symbolic importance of violence in The Odyssey?

1. How is war present throughout the story of The Odyssey?

5.How did the lack of Odysseus’s presence affect Telemachos’s growth?

1. How did Odysseus apply the knowledge he gained during his journey to overcome obstacles?

You will be expected to reference ONE quotation, and use MLA formatting.  MLA formatting requires that you underline or italicize The Odyssey and cite your quotations.  For Homer, you will cite as follows:

Akhilleus said “Better I say, to break sod as a farm hand / for some poor country man” (Homer, XI.544 – 5).  That’s author, book number and then line numbers.  The “/” indicates a break in the poetic line.

Due: Thursday 25th at 7pm.

Zeus, up to his usual tricks, hauls off a young lady named Aigina to the island that later bears her name. Apparently Sisyphos witnessed the abduction, and when the girl’s father goes looking for her, Sisyphos tells him that Zeus is the culprit.

The father of the gods is none too pleased at having his latest affair outed, and he sends Thanatos (Death) to collect Sisyphos. But the trickster manages to capture Thanatos, and for a time no mortal can die. Perhaps because wars can’t easily won without a tally of corpses, Ares eventually shows up to free Thanatos, who promptly nabs his captor.

Sisyphos, however, has one more trick up his sleeve. He instructs his wife Merope to skip the proper funerary rites. Hades the god of the Underworld is offended by this lack of protocol and sends Sisyphos back to scold her. Sisyphos is understandably tardy in arranging for a proper funeral, so he manages to live to old age and die a natural death.

When he shows up in the underworld, however, he finds a special place picked out for him, and a special punishment: his eternally rolling stone.

The plot of this myth as it was later written down sounds suspiciously like something out of a Greek comedy, and sure enough, a list of the lost works of Aischylos shows a few satyr plays with Sisyphos in the title. He may have started with an incomplete nugget of myth — Odysseus’ glimpse of Sisyphos and his rock in Homer’s Odyssey, and the general idea that Sisyphos was a man who tried to cheat death — and expanded it into a full-fledged story.

Greek mythology is like that: starting with Homer, authors shape and expand popular conceptions of the gods and myths. The stories are always changing, and the versions we now know are often the latest and most successful retellings of older myths.

That also explains why, in later fifth century authors and on Greek vases, there are suggestions that the wily hero Odysseus is a bastard of Sisyphos, not really the son of Laertes. In another of Aischylos’ plays, Ajax insults Odysseus by accusing him of being a bastard of Sisyphos, and like any juicy gossip, the story catches on.

(this is from Gantz, Early Greek Myths.

What I like about this snake image is the way in which it’s playing on the idea of snake = rampant sexuality. The joke is based on the notion that untrustworthy men are known colloquially as snakes, which is an idea that goes all the way back to the idea of the serpent tempting Eve with lies (there’s also a phallic connection, but I think that’s slightly less relevant right now). A snake is untrustworthy because a) it damned us all in Judeo-Christian thought, and b) it can shed its skin – start anew in a way that people can’t. The cartoon plays on both of these notions: the woman is being betrayed by a snake once more and the snake’s assumption that because it’s a snake, she should have expected his behavior.

Your assignment for this week is quite simple, and in keeping with some of the images we’ve been discussing in class. I would like for each of you to go online and find a media image from within the pastcouple of decades (we’ll say from 1990 on) that employs snake imagery. It could be a clip from a tv show, or movie, an advertising image – whatever you can find. Once you’ve posted your clip, I’d like you to write a short paragraph explaining the way in which the symbolism is being used.
Due: 9/15 at 5pm

What I remember most clearly about this advertisement, and where the charm is for me, is the garden. The house backs onto the site of a ruined twelfth century monastery. There are enough ruins for it to be a stunning backdrop to my new back garden, but not enough for it to be creepy and keep me awake at night! If I remember correctly, the picture I saw had a good-sized garden, surrounded by a low brick wall, with a gate at the end, after which were fields of long, wild grass, turned yellowish green in the late summer sun. I can’t imagine ever becoming bored of a view like that, and if I’m pushing my vision of paradise on it, we’ll pop a couple of ponies in the field behind, so that they can wander around, whinnying and swishing their tails, lazily.

In my paradise, my lovely little home (which would have a name like “Cornfields House”) would be on the edge of a small village, with a local store and a pub that I could walk to in the evening for dinner, because I can’t cook. I come from a tiny little town in England called Woodham Ferrers, and after living in New York for ten years, the idea of small town appeals. Of course, we’d also be near enough to Stratford-Upon-Avon so I could get my theatre and shopping fix when I needed to, but I’d have somewhere old and pretty to relax in when I have people-fatigue.

That’s paradise to me.

LG

Your first assignment is simple: write a 300-500 word description of your paradise. Simply describe what you would like eternity to be. This should be a paradise that is personal to you. If possible, use pictures to help illustrate your vision.

Due 9/8 at 9am

POLLIO 

Muses of Sicily, essay we now 
A somewhat loftier task! Not all men love 
Coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods, 
Woods worthy of a Consul let them be. 
Now the last age by Cumae’s Sibyl sung 
Has come and gone, and the majestic roll 
Of circling centuries begins anew: 
Justice returns, returns old Saturn’s reign, 
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven. 
Only do thou, at the boy’s birth in whom 
The iron shall cease, the golden race arise, 
Befriend him, chaste Lucina; ’tis thine own 
Apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, 
This glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, 
And the months enter on their mighty march. 
Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain 
Of our old wickedness, once done away, 
Shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. 
He shall receive the life of gods, and see 
Heroes with gods commingling, and himself 
Be seen of them, and with his father’s worth 
Reign o’er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, 
First shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth 
Her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray 
With foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, 
And laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, 
Untended, will the she-goats then bring home 
Their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield 
Shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. 
Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee 
Caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, 
Die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far 
And wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon 
As thou hast skill to read of heroes’ fame, 
And of thy father’s deeds, and inly learn 
What virtue is, the plain by slow degrees 
With waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, 
From the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, 
And stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless 
Yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong 
Some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, 
Gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. 
Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, 
Her hero-freight a second Argo bear; 
New wars too shall arise, and once again 
Some great Achilles to some Troy be sent. 
Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man, 
No more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark 
Ply traffic on the sea, but every land 
Shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more 
Shall feel the harrow’s grip, nor vine the hook; 
The sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer, 
Nor wool with varying colours learn to lie; 
But in the meadows shall the ram himself, 
Now with soft flush of purple, now with tint 
Of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine. 
While clothed in natural scarlet graze the lambs. 
“Such still, such ages weave ye, as ye run,” 
Sang to their spindles the consenting Fates 
By Destiny’s unalterable decree. 
Assume thy greatness, for the time draws nigh, 
Dear child of gods, great progeny of Jove! 
See how it totters- the world’s orbed might, 
Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault profound, 
All, see, enraptured of the coming time! 
Ah! might such length of days to me be given, 
And breath suffice me to rehearse thy deeds, 
Nor Thracian Orpheus should out-sing me then, 
Nor Linus, though his mother this, and that 
His sire should aid- Orpheus Calliope, 
And Linus fair Apollo. Nay, though Pan, 
With Arcady for judge, my claim contest, 
With Arcady for judge great Pan himself 
Should own him foiled, and from the field retire. 
Begin to greet thy mother with a smile, 
O baby-boy! ten months of weariness 
For thee she bore: O baby-boy, begin! 
For him, on whom his parents have not smiled, 
Gods deem not worthy of their board or bed.

Welcome to English 2800.  This is a communications intensive course, designed to introduce you to a variety of world cultures and literature, starting at the very beginning, and moving through history until just a little bit after Shakespeare.
The aim of this course is to introduce you to a wide variety of literary texts, hone your writing and critical thinking skills, and help you learn to express yourself articulately, beyond this course.  These are pretty substantial goals, but we’ll get to them through reading some really wonderful work, and having some in-depth class discussions.  The theme of this class is the myth of the golden age.  I want us to think about paradise – how it’s constructed from culture to culture, how one gets there, and more importantly, what one has to do to stay there.

This is the class blog, and here you will find the syllabus, our weekly assignments, and be able to look at the work of your classmates, and interact with them in an online forum.  So, have a look around, and I’ll look forward to getting to know you a little more in class!

LG