• How would you describe the genre(s) of the Pillow Book?
• How are poems and poetry used in the text? What is the place of poetry in Heian court life as depicted in the text?
• Whose values are authorized in The Pillow Book? How does this point of view affect the depiction of others in the text?
• What’s the purpose of the story of Okinamaro, the court dog? Of the begger nun and the snow mountain?
• Look at the various lists in The Pillow Book: “dispiriting things,” “rare things,” “things that are distressing to see,” “endearingly lovely things,” “things that give you pleasure.” What do the things in each of these lists have in common?
• What are your impressions of Sei Shonagon as a writer, and as a character in her own story?

Come up with one question or discussion topic of your own.

• How would you describe the genre of the Book? How does it differ in genre from what we’ve been reading so far?
• The Book makes use of several rhetorical devices you’d expect from a persuasive argument. How many can you find? How effectively are they used by Christine?
• In what specific ways does Christine adapt her classical source material for a Christian audience? (see esp. pp. 791, 799, 801)
• Several of Christine’s heroines are warriors and/or tacticians (Semiramis, the various Amazon queens, Dido). How do their military ethics compare to those of other warriors we’ve read of (Achilles, Beowulf, etc.)?
• Reason advises Christine to read misogynistic texts “to [her] advantage, no matter what the author’s original intention was.” Is this a valid reading strategy? When is it ok to disregard an author’s to suit our own argument?

• Is there any significance for Shaharazad and Shahrayar in the content of the stories, in addition to the strategy involved in telling them?
• Repetition and numbers help to structure the tales, and 3s are especially common structuring elements. How many events occur in 3s in the story? What is the effect of sequences of 3 in the tales?
• Women and “black” men receive particularly troubling portrayals in the frame narrative and in some of these tales. Do you find 1001 Nights racist or sexist? Can we even speak in terms of “racism” and “sexism” as those terms are used today?
• How many different ways is verse used in the tales?
• The “frame narrative” passages between tales are largely repetitive and formulaic, but is there any development of the narrative within those passages? Think especially of the character of King Shahrayar.

• What elements of the Epic genre (as you are so far familiar with them) are present in Beowulf? How does this English Epic differ from the Homeric or other epic forms you’ve read?
• What elements of oral performance survive in the printed text? Give specific examples.
• There are several embedded narratives in Beowulf (e.g. Sigemund and the dragon, ll. 883-914; and the Fight at Finnsburg, ll. 1070-1157). What is their function in the narrative and, considering their placement, in the action of the story?
• Who and what are Grendel and his mother? What is the source of their animosity toward the Danes?
• While the events of Beowulf take place in a pre-Christian Europe, the narrator has a distinct Christian perspective. Find some examples of both “pagan” and Christian elements in the poem and analyze how they compliment or contradict each other. (Hint: Look at Grendel’s attack on Heorot in lines 86-188.)

• The Muslim faith prescribes 5 articles of faith, or “pillars” of Islam: 1) daily prayer, 2) charity, 3) fasting, 4) pilgrimage, and 5) profession of faith. Where do you find examples of or injunctions to these acts in the selections you read?
• The Qur’an retells several episodes from both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels. What facts differ in the Islamic telling and how do this differences change the emphasis?
• It what ways does the Qur’an proclaim a new “covenant” with the “People of the Book”?
• Why do you think the Qur’an emphasizes both the singular (unitarian) nature of God and the humanity of Jesus?
• Come up with one additional questions form your reading to pose to the class.

• The Norton editors describe the Gospels as, perhaps “the single most influential text of world literature.” How many images, motifs, characters, sayings, etc. from the readings do you recognize from other texts or from everyday speech?
• How would you define “parable” as a literary genre? What are its distinctive features?
• In his explanation of his use of parables, Jesus tells his disciples “When a man has, he shall be given, and it will be more than he needs; but when he has not, even what he has shall be taken away from him” (Matthew 13). What does he mean? Do you agree with this?
• Jesus also explains his use of parables as the fulfillment of a prophesy of Isaiah from the Hebrew Bible. How would you explain the use of parable in strictly literary terms? What does it allow that more literal genres might not?
• What is the Matthew’s purpose of the graphic description of Jesus’ passion and crucifixion? How do you respond as a reader? How is the reader meant to respond?

• In the Norton headnote, xing is translated ‘evocative image’: “Xing brings natural images into suggestive resonance with human situations.” How does xing function both in the form and the meaning of the first 4 selections?
• These poems are clearly different in form and scope from the epic verse we’ve read so far. But are there similarities as well: In religious and moral instruction? Literary elements? Traces of oral performance?
• How does repetition function in the poems? Does it mirror something in the cycle of nature and human existence that the poems address?
• Why do you suppose these poems are so central to Confucianism? What values in the teachings of Confucius are celebrated in these poems? (You’ll have to skim some of the selection from Confucius in the Norton Anthology–or read more carefully if you want to consider this for a final paper topic.)

Here are some things to take note of as you read our first cycle of lyric poems–the Chinese Classic of Poetry

1. What image or images are introduced by the poet? Is there a central metaphor that is developed throughout the poem?
2. What kind of tone or mood is created by its formal elements?
   • Rhythmic elements like meter, accent, line length, stanza arrangement, repetition, etc.?
   • Sound elements such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeia?
3. How do the form and content work together to create meaning? Or is there an ironic relationship between form and content that complicates meaning or creates ambiguity?
4. Does the poem center on a static image? Or is there movement from stanza to stanza––from one perspective to another? From a wider to a narrower focal length? From one time of year, or time of life, to another?
5. What are the poem’s normative functions? Does it authorize some “official” view of things? Or is it transgressive in some way?

Here are some questions to think about for Wednesday’s class.

• How does our contemporary concept of “tragedy” differ from Sophocles? What elements are necessary to qualify as “tragedy”?
• What are the symptoms of the plague in Thebes? How are they appropriate to the crime?
• Locate examples of dramatic irony in the text? What is the intended effect of irony in Oedipus?
• Why is so much disclosed through riddles? Is there some relationship between riddle-solving and the exercise of free will?
• What is the narrative function of the 1st scene between Oedipus and Kreon (beginning at line 617)? What do we learn about each from the scene?
• Do you think Jokasta bears any blame for Oedipus’s fate? What errors does she make?
• How many different kinds of blindness are depicted in the tragedy? How does blindness function on both a literal and figurative level?

Choose 1 or 2 examples of epic simile from the reading and analyze. In your analysis, consider the following:

• What is being compared in the simile?
• On how many different levels does the comparison work?
• How does Homer’s choice of vehicle (the image the person or action is compared to) affect your understanding of the tenor (the person or action being compared)?
• Does the comparison familiarize the person or action or defamiliarize it—or does it do both in different ways?

Suggestions epic similes:

VI.533-538 – Paris compared to a fleet horse.

VIII.565-570 – The Greek armies compared to stars in the night sky.

XVI.517-519 – Sarpedon’s fall compared to trees felled in the forest.

XVI.863-867 – Hector and Patroclus compared to a lion and a boar at a spring.