LITERATURE HUMANITIES FALL 2001 HAM 407, TR 4:10-6:00 Instr. Göran Blix e-mail:gmb21

Paper #1

Instructions: Write a 5-6 page paper on one of the following topics. The paper is technically due on Friday Oct. 5, but if you need the weekend, you can also turn it in on Monday Oct. 8 (by noon at the latest). Drop the paper off in my box at the Department of French & Romance Philology, located on the 5th floor of Philosophy Hall.

The paper should have a clear argument, remain centered on the question it sets out to answer, and cite textual evidence for every non-trivial assertion it makes. This means following the text closely, finding the relevant passages, and analyzing them in minute detail in your paper--not just citing them at length and letting the reader do the work.

Things to avoid: (i) Plot summary. I know the text and so do you--5 pages is too short to waste time and space on the self-evident. Still, don't assume too much: also write for the hypothetical reader who only vaguely recalls the text. Strike a balance between over-informing and over-assuming. (ii) Critical Opinion. You are not judging the merit of the texts, but interpreting them. It doesn't matter if you find them well or poorly written, great or appalling, boring or exhilarating. What matters is working out the way the works create meanings. (iii) Moral Opinion. By the same token, moral or psychological judgment of the characters and their actions should be avoided. These are relevant only insofar as the text itself brings them up and comments on them--but then you are discussing the text's judgments (ok), instead of your own (not).

1. Odysseus relates a false tale about himself to the swineherd Eumaios when asked about his origins (XIV.191-359). What—apart from concealing his identity—is the function of this elaborate story? How does it echo, develop and rework the larger themes of the Odyssey? Refer also to lying as a form of truth (at XIX.204) in your answer.

2. Craft and trickery seem to replace force as the chief virtues in the world of the Odyssey. Explore some instances in which they are put to use. Are they celebrated without reservation and ambivalence?

3. How is the figure of the “singer/story-teller” represented in the Odyssey? What values, honors, powers and functions are associated with this figure—and why? How does story-telling work not just to transform actions and experience into words, but also, inversely, to make words influence human actions?

4. Analyze the representation of the cultural ideal of marriage in the Odyssey: what is its ideal form? What are its failures? Why is marriage so central a concern in this epic? How is the gendering of conjugal roles represented?

5. Compare the male and female initiation stories we have seen in Hymn to Demeter and the Telemachy.

6. In the Iliad, mortality is the defining feature of human existence, constituting both its absolute limit and the source of its value (timé). Consciousness of death—and of its aftermath—seems to alter this heroic outlook. Who becomes conscious of death (their own or that of loved ones) in the Iliad? In what terms? How does this alter their relation to the war?

7. The question of the “value” or “price” of a life is raised explicitly in the depiction of the “City of Peace” on Achilles’ shield (XVIII.497-508). It is also touched on at IX. 632-5 and in Lykaon’s story (XXI.40-2). oHow Why is this question so central to the Iliad? Explore how the epic tries to answer it in economic and judicial terms (cf. XXII. 209-13)—and also how the “value of life” exceeds these frameworks.

8. The conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles in Bk. I of the Iliad can be read as a power struggle within the Greek camp—and as a conflict over how justice is meted out by the king. Explore this political reading. How do Books IX (the embassy) and XXIII (the games) develop and resolve the issue of kingship and justice? Is the resolution unproblematic?