Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Paper Topics | Fall 2015 | Paper 3

Due Saturday, November 14th, 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Length: 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words)

The topics for Paper #3 all ask you to think about modes of representation, and to make arguments either about the relationship between the textual and the visual, or about the ways in which different visual representations affect their viewer. In writing this essay, it is important that you be specific about particular details of visual (and textual) representation, that you consider formal features as well as references to shared human experience, literature, and mythology, and above all that you advance a definite thesis.

  1. Reread Homer's account of Sarpedon's death at Book 16, lines 644-683 of The Iliad, then carefully examine Euphronios' depiction of this scene:

    http://cdm-workspace.reed.edu/slideshow/4035?slide=78
    http://cdm-workspace.reed.edu/slideshow/4035?slide=79
    http://cdm-workspace.reed.edu/slideshow/4035?slide=80
    http://cdm-workspace.reed.edu/slideshow/4035?slide=81

    Write an essay comparing these different modes of representation: what can the painter provide for us that the poet cannot, and what can the poet present that is unavailable to the painter? Given that the viewer cannot fully understand the painting without recalling the poem, how does the pot do more than simply illustrate a particular moment in the poem?

  2. Reread Hesiod's two accounts of Hephaistos' construction of Pandora (Lombardo translation of Works and Days, lines 77-125 and Theogony lines 573-620). Both texts carefully sequence details of Pandora's assemblage and reception and call out for multiple sensory responses. Compare how this evocation works in both passages and make an argument about how those differences and similarities serve the particular ends of these two works.

  3. Here are three views of the Peplos kore:

    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,2438
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,2440
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,113762

    And here are four views of the Egyptian statue of Takushit:

    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,123176
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,123178
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,123183
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,123193

    On the basis of your comparison of the formal details of these two statues, including the patterns that cover the bodies (clothing in one case; script in the other), make an argument for how each statue presents itself for an imagined viewer and what effect that form of presentation has on how we read the defining qualities of those bodies (gender, of course, but you may focus on other qualities).

  4. Here are three views of The Foundry Cup, by the Foundry Painter (so named for this very cup):

    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,127999
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,128035
    http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,128051

    The pot is a red figure drinking cup. The interior of the bowl shows Thetis visiting the forge of Hephaistos to ask for new armor for Achilleus. Sides A and B, on the outsides of the pot, both depict artisans at work in a foundry. How does this pot portray artisans and craft (techne) in general, and to what purpose is this portrayal deployed? Base your essay on the formal details of the cup (what you can observe, not what you already know about the story portrayed).

  5. When we first encounter Helen in The Iliad (Book 3, lines 125-128), she is employed weaving a robe depicting events of the Trojan War. How does this scene create an expectation that Helen has something important to say about the war? In what ways does it matter that Helen is weaving a robe rather than (like Achilleus), "singing of men's fame" (Book 9, line 189)? What do we learn about the war from Helen's subsequent speeches? Do these speeches fortify the dominant narrative of the war, qualify it, or undermine it?