World Masterpieces 02 (Fall 2009): Second Exam, Essay Section
If you are thinking about looking at internet or library sources (etc.) to help you prepare, consider the following crucially important note! It should not be necessary to use any resources other than our texts and your class notes in preparing for the exam. However, if you do choose to go to the library or the internet for help in preparing, consider a couple of things. |
1) Don’t assume everything you find on the web is right or true or useful. I say this first because the kinds of questions we are considering don’t always have absolutely true, simple answers, and second because the quality of materials on the internet varies enormously. Consider the type of site you are using. Who made it for what purpose and for what audience? If it is something posted by a student, a hobby medievalist, or a student in high school or below, it may not offer anything you couldn’t have come up with yourself. (Or then again, it may!) If it is something posted by professionals for professional audiences, it may offer more detailed analysis than will really do you any good, perhaps confusing you more than helping you. Things posted by professors for students may be the most useful, but even there, remember that they may have been written for very different audiences, for different courses, on different levels, with different emphases. |
| 2) Most important, remember that any use of the words or ideas of another person without proper attribution is plagiarism, which is morally wrong and can get you in big trouble with your university. Plagiarism is not an issue with information that is readily available from a wide number of sources, such as the dates of Virgil’s life or the names of the characters in The Iliad. But if you rely heavily and directly, for example, on the way Professor X defines epic or Professor Y discusses the “Homeric question,” you could get yourself into trouble. Proper citation on an in-class essay exam like this would not require the exact url or web address of what you are citing, but a fairly specific attribution like “on Professor So-and-So’s website at the University of X.” And if you have somehow memorized the exact words of some source, don’t forget the quotation marks! |
So if you choose to use the web (or the library) to help you study, remember: • consider your source, • use what is useful and ignore the rest, • don’t rely heavily and directly on any one site, unless you are prepared to cite it properly in your essay. These remarks should not be taken as suggesting, requiring, or encouraging you to use library and internet sources. I do not encourage you to use such sources in preparing your essays. Again, all you really need is your texts and your notes and your brain. |
There is one topic, but it is broadly defined. Part of your job is to narrow it down to a manageable topic for a short essay and create a clear, specific thesis.
| This is the topic. The usual way of thinking about the history of Western Culture involves a dramatic break or boundary around 500 AD, with Classical Antiquity before that date and the Middle Ages after it, and the two periods seen as radically different. On closer examination of literary texts from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, however, one can find both continuities and discontinuities: things that do change dramatically between the two periods, and things that do not change so radically. Your assignment is to write a well-organized essay that argues a well-defined thesis about continuity and/or discontinuity between ancient and medieval literature, based on the texts we have read. |
This will require you to narrow the whole general question of continuities and discontinuities to one definable issue that is manageable in a short essay. I offer some possible ways to do this below. If you have other ideas, feel free to develop those.
In preparing for the exam, spend some time seriously
thinking about the topic. Narrow the broad topic down to a manageable one.
Think about the thesis you want to argue and what your evidence will be. Review
your notes or our texts to refresh your memory of the evidence you might need
to use. Work out your thesis and outline your evidence. You will not be allowed to use any notes to write the in-class essay,
but you may certainly have a thesis and an outline in your head.
It may be very useful to look at the grading rubric below. This may help you understand how to write an essay that will get a better grade.
Remember, the idea is to focus on one thing and write a well-organized essay about it. If your thesis is “there are things that change and things that stay the same between ancient and medieval literature,” this is not going to produce a good paper. If your thesis is something like “love is important in both ancient and medieval literature,” this is a little better, but not very much. Remember, the point is to make an argument in support of a well-defined thesis, not just to list a number of points of information or summarize the plots of a couple of works.
The following are some possible ways to think about the broader topic of continuity and discontinuity between ancient and medieval literature. You may want to read over them all, but there is no need to think deeply about more than one. Again, if you have another idea for approaching the broader topic, that is fine, too. If you write on one of these topics, take the toughts and questions offered here as a starting point for thinking about the topic. Do not feel that every point raised and every sub-question asked here has to be answered in an essay.
· Consider the role of love in several of our texts. Is love something different from lust or desire? Is love a positive force or a negative force? That is, does it tend to motivate people to do good things and live better lives, or does it tend to make people do bad or foolish things? Is love a central force in driving plots and motivating characters, or is it more marginal?
· Consider whether there are a set of values that are common to several of our texts – values such as honor, loyalty, steadfastness, courage, hospitality, piety. Do the ancient and the medieval texts seem to share some of the same core values, or do they seem to have different ones? If they do share some of the same values, do the ways in which these values are understood change? (For example, several texts might prize “loyalty,” but might define loyalty in different ways or expect characters to show loyalty to different people.) If ancient and medieval texts seem generally to prize different values, or define key values in significantly different ways, then you might proceed to consider what these difference show about larger differences between the periods.
· Consider the role of religious faith in several of our texts. How does this change or remain the same between Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages? Obviously, our ancient authors (before Augustine) were not Christians, while our medieval authors (and Augustine) were Christian. How significant is this for the literary works that these authors create? For example, you might decide that certain works embody certain ethical values, such as, perhaps, love or loyalty or courage, in such a way that the change of religions is not important. Or you might decide that certain works value faith and piety in similar ways, even those the names of the gods or God and the details of how one worships have changed. Or you might decide that the change from ancient polytheism to Christianity is of the utmost importance and changes everything about the kind of literature that is produced. Finally, you might consider whether the change from ancient polytheism to Christianity involves a profound change in the way people see meaning in the world and in literary texts: is the medieval Christian belief in levels of meaning that completely transcend the ordinary physical world something totally new, or does it have parallels in ancient texts?
· Consider the ways in which stories are told. For example, consider the epic. How are ancient epics – Homer, Virgil, Ovid – similar to medieval epics – Beowulf, Roland, Parzival, the Divine Comedy -- and how are they different? Does the epic tradition experience a significant break at the transition from ancient times to the Middle Ages, or does it show continuity that is more important than any changes? (For purposes of this essay, it is probably best to define “epic” rather broadly as “long literary narrative” and focus on how these authors tell their stories, rather than getting bogged down in the question of whether all or some of our medieval narratives are “epics” in a narrow sense.
· Consider the ways in which literary works create meanings and can be interpreted. For example, we discussed the idea that Homer’s works are “all surface” and do not have “deeper meanings” (although you do not necessarily have to agree with that), while certain other works, such as The Aeneid, quite obviously demand to be interpreted as having multiple “levels” of meaning. Do you see a general change between our ancient works and our medieval works in this respect? Or a more or less steady development from Homer to Dante, with Homer the simplest and Dante the most complex in terms of multiple meanings? Or do you think some works invite interpretation more than others in both the ancient and the medieval eras, and see no overall trend?
• Is the thesis clearly expressed?
•
Is the thesis narrower and more specific than a simple catch-all
thesis like “some things are the same and some are different” or "love
is important in many ancient and medieval texts”?
• Is the thesis narrow and specific enough to produce a really meaningful statement about the overall topic?
• Does the essay end with a conclusion that at least sums up what has been argued?
•
Does the conclusion go beyond that minimal requirement to offer
something more than a simple summing up, such as an indication of where
one might go next in thinking about the topic or a suggestion of the
broader significance of what has been argued?
•
Does the essay meet minimal standards of organization, in that it
has an introduction that states a thesis, a middle that offers
evidence, and a conclusion?
• Does the essay go
beyond minimal standards of organization to offer evidence in a clearly
organized way that advances an argument, and avoids, for example,
extended plot summary?
• Does the essay show exceptionally good organization?
• Does the evidence offered support the thesis to a reasonable extent?
• Has evidence been chosen to support the thesis in a way that goes beyond what is minimally acceptable?
• Has evidence been chosen to support the thesis in a way that is exceptionally good?
• Is the writing reasonably clear and free of gross grammatical errors?
• Is the writing at least average?
• Is the writing exceptionally clear, elegant, or forceful (without being “purple” or “overwritten”)?
<4= D
4 = C-
5 = C
6 = C+
7 = B-
8 or 9 = B
10 or 11 = B+
12 = A-
13 or 14 = A