{"id":6634,"date":"2019-06-20T10:33:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T17:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/?page_id=6634"},"modified":"2019-06-20T10:33:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T17:33:19","slug":"fall-essay-assignment-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/history-and-archives\/2018-2019-fall\/fall-essay-assignment-1\/","title":{"rendered":"2018-2019 Fall: Essay Assignment 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Literary Analysis of the <em>Aeneid<\/em><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><i class=\"fa fa-file fa-2x;\"><!-- icon --><\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/?ddownload=1232\">Printable Essay Rubric<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/?ddownload=5473\">Printable Essay Prompt<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Assignment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Choose a passage (~25\u2013100 lines) from\u00a0Virgil\u2019s <em>Aeneid<\/em>\u00a0that contains a thematically significant extended metaphor or epic simile. How does the conceptual work of this passage and its form contribute to a larger motif in the epic as a whole?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Your final paper will be between 3\u20134 pages in length (no more than 5) and will be worth 30% of your writing grade. For the purposes of this assignment, you will treat Robert Fagles\u2019 translation of Virgil\u2019s <em>Aeneid<\/em> (2006) as the primary source.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><i class=\"fa fa-check-square-o fa-2x;\"><!-- icon --><\/i> Learning Goals<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make specific, clear, arguable claims<\/li>\n<li>Produce cohesive paragraphs<\/li>\n<li>Present well-selected evidence from close reading that is well-contextualized and explained<\/li>\n<li>Develop strong warrants and effective transitions between ideas<\/li>\n<li>Adopt the appropriate stance, style, and genre conventions of literary analysis<\/li>\n<li>Practice active revision such that the final draft demonstrates that the student has developed flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading drafts while also reflecting on the process of writing itself<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><i class=\"fa fa-eye fa-2x;\"><!-- icon --><\/i> Required Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before you begin brainstorming for this assignment, make sure you have read the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lewis, Jayne. \u201cClose Reading and Literary Analysis.\u201d <em>Humanities Core Writer\u2019s Handbook<\/em>, edited by Larisa Castillo and Tamara Beauchamp, XanEdu, 2018, 37\u201350.<\/li>\n<li>Morse, Susan. \u201cParagraph Writing Strategies.\u201d <em>Humanities Core Writer\u2019s Handbook<\/em>, edited by Larisa Castillo and Tamara Beauchamp, XanEdu, 2018, 51\u201361.<\/li>\n<li>Short, Gretchen. \u201cWriting Transitions.\u201d <em>Humanities Core Writer\u2019s Handbook<\/em>, edited by Larisa Castillo and Tamara Beauchamp, XanEdu, 2018, 79\u201386.<\/li>\n<li>Knox, Bernard. Introduction. <em>The Aeneid<\/em>, by Virgil, Penguin Books, 2006, pp. 1\u20133, 11\u201336.<\/li>\n<li>Virgil. <em>The Aeneid<\/em>. Translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, 2006, Books 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong><i class=\"fa fa-pencil fa-2x;\"><!-- icon --><\/i> The Writing Process<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Your first essay assignment this year in Humanities Core is a literary analysis of a passage from Virgil\u2019s\u00a0<em>Aeneid<\/em>. The purpose of this assignment is for you to focus on a single primary source in detail and to think about how form creates meaning. As you learned in Jayne Lewis\u2019s <em>Writer\u2019s Handbook<\/em> chapter, literary analysis involves close reading\u2014the formal description and interpretation of carefully selected portions of a literary work. When you close read your chosen passage, you examine how its literary features\u2014such as diction, syntax, imagery, and figures of speech\u2014create meaning. Your reading is \u201cclose\u201d because it examines details, keywords, or lines from your passage that you consider to be most important in representing a specific point of view.<\/p>\n<p>While the primary evidence for your claims will be drawn from a close reading of your chosen passage, your essay should also reflect upon how those authorial decisions about form shape a larger theme\/motif of the text. Such themes include, but are not limited to, the costs and rewards of founding and\/or building an empire, civilization and barbarism, Roman conceptions of virtue, gender and the role of women, community and individuality, private and public duty, friendship and enmity, self and other, beginnings and endings, suffering and loss, fate and individual agency, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Because you will be analyzing a literary work of a particular genre, you will likely examine formal features common to epic poetry\u2014for example, the ornamental epithet, the invocation to the muse, <em>vaticinium ex eventu<\/em>, etc.\u2014alongside common literary features like meter, diction, and alliteration. In particular, if you choose a passage containing an epic simile (often called a Homeric simile because it is so particular to the Greek epic), you should contemplate the implications of this formal device for a Roman poet like Virgil. Use Andrew Zissos\u2019s Humanities Core lectures and Bernard Knox\u2019s introduction to our edition of the <em>Aeneid<\/em> as your guide.<\/p>\n<p>In classical literature like the <em>Aeneid<\/em>, metaphors and similes can serve different poetic functions and accomplish different forms of conceptual work. Sometimes these devices act to make something clearer to the reader by appealing to a familiar experience or idea. Other times, these devices try to make something more vivid or immediate by evoking a surprising or unexpected sensory image. Part of the work of your essay will be to make interpretive claims about the function of the extended metaphor or simile in the particular case of your passage. Is the function of the metaphor to make an idea clearer or more comprehensible? Or is it to make an idea striking or resonant? What associations might the metaphor have called up for its intended audience?<\/p>\n<p>Take, for instance, the scene in Book 1 in which Aeneas and his crew find themselves tossed about in a tempest conjured by Juno. Neptune sweeps in to calm the storm, and his actions are described in the following simile:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Just as, all too often,<br \/>\nsome huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising<br \/>\nthe rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion,<br \/>\nrocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms<br \/>\nbut then, if they chance to see a man among them,<br \/>\none whose devotion and public service lend him weight<br \/>\nthey stand there, stock-still with their ears alert<br \/>\nas he rules their furor with his words and calms their passions. (1.174\u201381)<\/p>\n<p>It is the nature of metaphor to have multiple levels of meaning that can be parsed. First, you should establish what is literally happening in the passage by summarizing the scene, and then identify what is being compared on the figurative level. In this passage, the chaotic seas are likened to an angry mob and the god who quells the tempest is compared to a great mortal leader, a man capable of quieting a violent uprising. Next, you should inventory how the passage operates formally by carefully annotating for diction, syntax, imagery, and figures of speech. One might note, for example, the significance of certain word choices, enjambment, alliteration, and synecdoche in the lines above. A third critical prewriting step will be to brainstorm the thematic relationship of the part to the whole. What larger themes of the epic are operating in this passage? In the introduction to our edition of the <em>Aeneid<\/em>, Knox links this particular simile to a series of Roman values that would have been familiar to Virgil\u2019s audience: <em>pietas<\/em>, a sense of loyalty and duty to the nation; <em>gravitas<\/em>, \u201ca profound seriousness in matters political and religious\u201d; and <em>auctoritas<\/em>, \u201cthe power and respect won by men of experience, of successful leadership in war and peace\u201d (14). The devoted public servant in the simile above certainly seems to embody these values\u2014one might even go so far as to suggest that this simile is a figuration of Augustus, the emperor who commissioned the <em>Aeneid<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>But you need not know a great deal about Roman culture or the context of Virgil\u2019s writing to perform an effective close reading; rather, the real work of this assignment is to make connections between the formal decisions of the poet and the interpretive meaning you identify within the passage. Perhaps one might assess the contrasting alliteration used to describe the crowd: \u201crabble\u201d that \u201cruns amok\u201d without a leader to guide them, but \u201cstock-still\u201d like obedient animals with \u201cears alert\u201d when he arrives. One might excavate how Virgil\u2019s choice of verbs conveys specific Roman leadership values; the leader who can harness the unruly crowd must \u201crule\u2026their furor,\u201d but also be capable of \u201ccalm[ing]\u2026their passions.\u201d One could observe that the synecdochic logic of the phrase \u201cRage finds them arms\u201d serves to deindividuate the angry crowd: their ire and the violence that it threatens seems unified, strengthening the comparison back to a natural force like the literal tempest that suggested this simile. Here, we can see how meaning is generated in the passage on multiple levels. Using details like these, a literary analysis of this passage could argue that poet is skeptical of the mores and motives of the masses and glorifies strong, authoritarian leadership.<\/p>\n<p>Merely establishing that a metaphorical vehicle and a larger theme\/motif are present in the passage is not a sufficient claim for this assignment. Ultimately, your essay must establish <strong><em>what<\/em><\/strong> the speaker of the poem is describing and comparing in the passage (summarization), <strong><em>how<\/em><\/strong> Virgil establishes this meaning at the level of diction, form, and rhetorical strategy (close reading), and <strong><em>why<\/em><\/strong> it is written in just that way (interpretation). Your <strong>interpretive claim<\/strong> (thesis) should convey how the form of the text generates its meaning. This assignment is also a place where you will begin to develop strong humanistic claims, organized paragraphs, and effective transitions between ideas. This will happen over multiple drafts with peer and instructor feedback on your revisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Literary Analysis of the Aeneid &nbsp; Printable Essay Rubric | Printable Essay Prompt Assignment Choose a passage (~25\u2013100 lines) from\u00a0Virgil\u2019s Aeneid\u00a0that contains a thematically significant extended metaphor or epic simile. How does the conceptual work of this passage and its form contribute to a larger motif in the epic as a whole? Your final paper [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":6619,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6635,"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6634\/revisions\/6635"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/core.humanities.uci.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}