Paper Topics | Fall 2018 | Paper 2
Paper Due: Saturday, October 6th at 5:00 PM in your conference leader’s Eliot Hall mailbox
Target length: 1400–1600 words
In this paper, you will continue to develop your close reading skills. Some of the topics ask you to compare and contrast two texts. If you choose one of these prompts, you do not need to offer an exhaustive description of each work, but be sure that you clarify precisely which aspects of them you are comparing and that you discuss those particular features of the texts in detail.
- In the process of establishing cosmic order in Greek thought, the Theogony depicts several cycles of creation. What roles do female deities play in Hesiod’s poem? How do these roles change as the poem’s narrative develops? You are encouraged to consider different forms of female agency, these deities’ power of creation, and the ways ritual practice helps create their divine authority.
- Early in the Odyssey and Exodus, Telemachus and Moses each have an encounter with a deity (Athena, Yahweh) who assures them that s/he will inspire their speech when necessary. Comparing the circumstances in which the promise is made and how the god delivers, analyze how speech shapes the human-deity relationship.
- Compare the Pharaoh characters in Sinuhe and the Joseph story in Genesis. You may choose to focus on the dynamics of leadership and power, the central role played by Egypt, or other features of the stories.
- Consider the simile that begins on line 588 in Book 8 of the Odyssey (“as a woman weeps, her arms flung round her darling husband…”). How does this passage inform our understanding of Odysseus? A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things, often using like or as. What is distinctive about the comparisons and contrasts at work here?