Final Paper Assignment
EH 280
Final Paper
Due Date: Email me your paper by the scheduled start time of the final exam
Topic- just one (sort of)-
Using some of the key terms and ideas listed below, explore three or four works’/ authors’ representations of the complexities of selfhood/ personhood/ being. Try to create a coherent focus for the essay- but in case of need, subsections with subtitles might be the answer. So, this might explore the meaning of life and death, or the transformation through action and suffering, or a critique of the world that “Heroic” literature seems to offer or perhaps an exploration of the inner life of the everyday and the interpersonal or investigate the world of values- perhaps love or friendship or family or state or connections with nature. How can you, like Odysseus or Aeneas, find a path through all our tribulations that makes sense of all you have suffered on your way home.
Length: 7 to 10 pages of magnificent understanding and clarity that reveal your depth and Range of reading and exploration- As you might guess, this also serves a form of study for the final. Depth of detail and breadth of insight will be rewarded
Think about Hamartia, Hybris and Catastrophe, Anagnoresis, Metamorphosis, Catharsis, Fate and Destiny, Satiric and Comic Irony, Making Sense of Folly and Suffering, Gods and Oracles, Love and Passion, Madness, Reason, and Ecstasy, The Inner Life and Inner Conflict, Gender Roles, Protagonists and Antagonists, Natural Phenomena, and the Reality of Death, Home (Nostos), and Exile, The “Inner” life and the development of the individual, Gender and Stereotypes, Possibilities and Limits of Humans [and even the Gods]. Be sure to refer to Topic 8 on our Moodle Site. And some ideas you may have. Don’t neglect your notes and others and other Terms and Ideas you have recorded.