Final Exam - Part Two
EH 280 Final
Open Book and Notes
LEGIBILITY IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
General Principles:
This is a comprehensive exam.
The totality of your exam should reflect your RANGE of reading and your DEPTH of understanding. Be usefully specific to reveal that you read and know the texts in some consequential way.
Be sure to read the questions as written here.
Be sure to spend at least two hours on the exam in its totality.
Part One
Directions: Select One of the following three questions and spend 15 to 20 minutes on your answer.
1. Which character other than the protagonist- probably an antagonist or a character addressed in a lyric- seemed most real and interesting to you? What allowed you to listen so well to that character?
2. Of the characters and authors we have met, who would be most likely to succeed in our world
3. If you had to live in a world represented in one of our readings, what world would you choose and how would you live and adapt? What would be the easiest transition? What would be your biggest challenge?
Part Two
Directions: Answer two or three of the following questions in a timely fashion. Be Insightful
1. We all know about Recognition (Anagnoresis) and Hamartia, Catharsis, and Hybris. How do we see these features connected in our dramatic readings? You may focus only on tragedy or you may do comedy, or both tragedy and comedy
2. Many of our works celebrate the heroic and the hero. How does The Aeneid develop the nature of the hero? What kind of antagonist is Dido?
3. According to our authors, what gives living, and, perhaps, dying, its real meaning?
4. Literature occurs in a social context and helps shape society. How do our works inform us about the society in which they were written? [And or] how do they manifest a sense of what a good society ought to be? This is a good topic for writing about comedy and satire.
5. How do our readings, including Roman works, offer us insight into the world of women we encountered in our other readings?
6. What makes the lyrics of Sappho and Catullus equally significant and consequential as the narratives and dramas?
7. Love in its various forms has been part of our reading since we began. How do some of our works show the power and danger of love?
8. As Gilgamesh reminds us, humans live in a world that connects them to the gods and to nature. How is that connection between humans and nature given a significant, if indirect, emphasis in our readings?
9. something a bit more playful—If Odysseus, or Aeneas, could write poems about their feelings, what would those poems be.
10. Medea and Oedipus becomes tragic heroes- as does Jason in a way- also Heracles gets to be a tragic hero to the Romans- so the question is, could Odysseus or Aeneas be a tragic (or Comic) Hero?
11. People like me often talk about the “Tragic View of Life;” based on our readings, what would be the comic view of life?
12. outline a tragedy or comedy you might invent about one or more of the women in our readings
13. Something similar- select a few of the women in our readings [I suggest including Siduri] and offer a sense of what the women would understand as the meaning and value of life and death.
14. Contrast the afterlife as suggested by The Odyssey with Aeneas’ visit to the underworld in the Aeneid. An excellent answer will touch on a few specifics from other works.
15. In some ways Gilgamesh defines one of the basic human dilemmas in a world created or ruled by divinities- Why are humans given godlike qualities and hopes and desires, but condemned to live and die unfulfilled? Which of our works / authors offers the best solution to this dilemma?
16. How can we find contemporary meaning and wisdom in these ancient texts? Select a few details to make your analytical point.
An extra item:
List 10 to 15 items from your notes-- ideas or definitions. Name them and give a brief capsule explanation