EH 366 Midterm Exam
Select questions and answers that engage you in thinking and writing for something like an hour and a half to two hours; two hours is better.
Use your books and notes, but don't be limited by them.
Choose as many of these delights as give you sufficient space, time, and energy for your overall number and depth of answers.
1. Let the BSC campus be the Underworld. Tour a few Infernal highlights that reveal you reading and imaginative engagement with our texts.
2. Argue that Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is the quintessential tragic figure of the Modern world. How is he the real Paradigm of tragic psychology both for the individual and Modern humanity.
3. Consider the nature of Dante's sins and sinners and argue, with examples, for a new and consequential circle.
4. If Faustus had repented, could have enjoyed Satanic pleasure AND finally the rewards of Heaven.
5. What if a Christian Saint guided Dante through the Inferno?
6. What if Faustus were correct, that Hell is the Elysium Virgil shows us? How would that recast the tragic world? Think deeply about the cultural meaning of the Classical and Christian needs for and uses of representations of Afterlife.
7. How does each of our authors in a sense rewrite his predecessor?
8. Where will Faustus go in Dante's Hell?
9. Our three most recent underworlds function as warning and guidance; what is the purpose of Homer's realm of the dead?
10. If Dante's sinners after death realize their errors and regret them, why can't they be saved?
10a. Is the Inferno a sign of a cruel and unforgiving lord?
11. Hake sense out of Satan.
12. What does Dante actually learn in Hell? How is he transformed?
13. what is justice as we see it represented?
14. Is there anything sinful about twenty-four years of pleasure?
15. Should Faustus just have content with his achievements and accepted what his books told him?
16. Imagine yourself judged by Minos. To what circle would you be sent and how would you endure?
17. Which of the Dantean punishments seems most fair; which seems most cruel?
18. Imagine Dante's Inferno as a theme park.
19. How would the afterlife be different as conceived by a female poet?
20. Our Protagonists have no real Antagonist on their journey. How do the authors create conflict?
21. If Virgil can climb with Dante to the top of Mount Purgatory, why must he return?
22. Find your own path through the underworlds we have visited. What is the guiding metaphor for you? Is there a guide? Be creative and reveal your reading.
23. Celebrate Homer's work in the context of our readings.
24. May inspiration guide you to the question you wish to answer.