In an essay of 4-6 pages (double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-pt. font, 1-in. marg

In an essay of 4-6 pages (double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-pt. font, 1-in. margins), write a critical
response to one or multiple texts from our course readings so far: this could be in the form of a focused
close reading analysis, a thematic argument about a text, or a comparative analysis of a topic across two
texts. Your essay should include analyses of specific textual passages, exploring their details and nuances.
How do the features that you examine yield us a better understanding of the text?
Close reading takes the form of
1. examining/making observations about formal or stylistic traits (literary devices such as imagery,
metaphor, repetition, etc.; syntax; other structural elements of language) at work in the chosen
passage that strike you as important or meaning-making;
2. noticing the patterns, relations, and tensions in the observations you’ve made;
3. and elucidating for your reader not only what the aspects you’ve derived in (1) and (2) involve or
how they work, but also what they are for—why they matter, what insights they produce.
In this whole process, you should formulate questions and arguments about the analyses you have
unfolded, building up your critical engagement with the text into greater complexity as the essay goes on.
Your writing may or may not reflect the exact order delineated above!
The assignment should not include outside research; the aim of the assignment is to hone your own
focused investigation of a topic, idea, or text. Please format your assignments in either the MLA or the
Chicago citation style.
Some suggested prompts:
1. Odysseus and epic similes
Select a set of epic similes that Odysseus deploys in the Odyssey that complicate or unsettle your
understanding of the situation or person being described, or provide insight into Odysseus’
character. What are the effects of the similes, and what do the similes achieve?
Some similes you might focus on include
2. Sincerity and insincerity
Many of the literary figures we have encountered so far tell stories: Enheduana, Helen, Odysseus,
Agamemnon, Eumaeus. How do narrators of their own stories convey a sense of their sincerity in
their storytelling? What does the speaker hope to accomplish through their storytelling, and how
does their performance of storytelling tie into their purposes? What are the markers of narratorial
sincerity—or, conversely, of narratorial insincerity? What happens to insincere storytellers? How
do listeners and readers know a narrator is being sincere or insincere?
3. The idea of home and the idea of safety; safe spaces
How do human figures in the texts that we’ve read know they are home, or that they are safe?
Often, the idea of home is associated with a safe place—what is the relationship between home
and safety, and how is that relation constructed in the text of your chosen focus? How do humans
know or experience spaces and situations to be safe? What are the aesthetics of safety? In other
words, what visual, spatial, auditory, or otherwise iconographic cues contribute to the idea of an
environment or a situation as safe, and safe for whom? What is the role of the beautiful in
producing a sense of safety?
4. Of gods and mortals
Gods in “The Exaltation of Inana” and the Odyssey have complex relationships among
themselves along lines of power, age, and gender; gods also have complex relationships with
mortal humans. How are such relations drawn in the text? What understandings do we get of the
gods’ fallibilities and/or their presences as forces in the world? When and why do gods intervene
in mortal affairs? What is the difference between gods and mortals? What do gods have that
humans don’t, and what do humans have that gods don’t? Are there shared qualities or features
between gods and humans, and do these shared features ever complicate the power dynamics
between the divine and the human? What are the strategies that the poet uses to represent gods—
i.e., the poetics of divinity?
A non-exhaustive list of themes/topics you might also consider: 1) anger and grief, and the moral
status of anger and grief—and relatedly, the moral status of tears; 2) crises of identity and knowledge; 3)
marriage and other family relations, or motherhood and fatherhood; 4) ways of establishing community or
social relations; 5) the work of poetry and/or art; 6) the nature of reality and the world as we know it; 7)
journeys away from home, and how they may be physical, emotional, spiritual, etc.; 8) violence and
violation; 9) justice and revenge; 10) trauma and suffering; 11) inequality, including gender inequality or
structural inequality; 12) the relationship between humans and nonhumans (e.g., gods, animals, plants,
land); 13) rhetoric and persuasion; 14) lyric and performance; 16) bodies
CREATIVE ASSIGNMENT ALTERNATIVE
For one of the essay assignments this semester, you have the option of composing a creative assignment
that responds to one or more of the texts that we have read. The creative assignment must be accompanied
by a 2- to 3-page rationale (double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-pt. font, 1-in. margins) that explains
the connection of your creative response to a particular course text or critical idea. You are welcome to
collaborate with one or more of your classmates for this creative project, provided that your project’s
scope is complex and expansive enough to benefit from having multiple collaborators. You are also
strongly encouraged to arrange a visit during office hours to discuss your ideas for the assignment or be in
correspondence about your ideas via email.
Examples:
• A visual, musical, or multimedia representation of a scene, moment, or theme in one or more of
the texts we have read
• A podcast episode discussing a specific topic/theme/idea in one or more of the course texts
• A written composition in the literary form of one of the texts we have read (e.g., a lyric poem, a
lyric poem set to specific music, a play)