General Humanities I: Final Exam Assignment

On the first day of class, I asked you “what do you think is the oldest theme in ancient literature?” The options were:

·        “I love you, why don’t you love me?”

·        “I hate you, why don’t you die?”

·        “I can’t believe you’re dead! (sob)”

·        “Damn, that’s a pretty rainbow.”

While these were meant to be silly and simplistic, they still represent many of the core themes we encountered in this class, which were about the beauty and complications of love, the drive for conquest and revenge, the pain of death and loss, and the symbolic power of Nature. All the works in class contribute to one or more of the themes, and reveals how different times and cultures grappled with often contradictory ideas and emotions.

For your final exam paper, I want you to choose ONE of the themes above and explain how 2 or 3 works challenged how you see and understand this concept. Imagine you’re writing this to someone who hasn’t taken the class yet, so they know nothing about the books. Briefly introduce each one as you discuss it, and then help us understand how Sappho (for example) examines the meaning of loss in her poems. The goal of this paper is to show off what you’ve learned, and to play “connect the dots” with your readings, to show how each one builds on and responds to the one before.

Quote like this: In Act 4, scene 3 of Hamlet,  Hamlet tells Polonius that “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a kind and eat of the fish that hath fed of the worm” (197). [cite the page number of the edition you have]

REQUIREMENTS

·        No set page limit; do what you think is sensible and adequate

·        Quote from at least 2 works in class, but you can do up to 3

·        Write for someone outside of class; don’t write to me and say, “It’s like that one ghost story said, you know, the one about the lady with the egg face…”

·        DUE Friday December 13^th by 5pm: hard copy preferred, but e-mail accepted