Option 1: A four-page paper (first of three).
Option 2: A six-page paper (first of two).

Please write a well-organized essay on one of the following topics below. Note that your paper must make an argument, not merely a series of observations; i.e., you must have a conclusion, and your conclusion must not be about "what happens" in the plots of your chosen works. Any paper in which plot summary occupies 25% or more of the word count will receive an automatic "F." Rather, you must address how the works are made, and how they create their meaning, in part, through their treatment of the themes you are discussing.

I strongly recommend that you email me a thesis statement outlining a tentative argument on your chosen topic before you commence work on your paper.

Suggested topics:

1. At Aeneid X.857, Juno addresses Jupiter: "Darling husband,/Why provoke me, heartsick as I am,/and fearing as I do your grim decrees?…" In this speech, as at various moments in both the Aeneid and the Confessions, the special nature of the marriage bond seems to be at issue. Discuss the theme of marriage, distinguishing it where necessary from other sexual or family relationships, in the Aeneid, the Confessions, or both.

2. Reread Iliad VI.466-81 ("So speaking glorious Hektor…..delight the heart of his mother") and Aeneid XII.588-602 ("Avid for battle now….and uncle, Hektor, stir your heart." Write an essay in which you analyze each passage from the point of view of theme, style, language, imagery, or any other "angle" that seem promising to you, and see what you can learn about the relationship between Vergil and Homer from your analysis. Draw only those conclusions that your analysis supports; feel free to surprise me.

3. Collect examples of hybridity (human/god, human/animal, interspecies, or any other kinds of half-and-half mixture you can find; feel free to define the term creatively) in the Aeneid, the Confessions, or both. Write an essay in which you explain what your examples are doing there (what they contribute to the work, whether they form a meaningful vocabulary of hybrid images, what we are supposed to glean from them).

4. Both the Aeneid and the Confessions are rife with images of other art forms: sculpture, theatre, metallurgy, poetry, oral performance… Select some juicy examples, analyze them, and, from your findings, draw some interesting conclusions about the significance of art (or of different kinds of art) in the two works. Keep in mind that any depiction of one work of art within another contains an implicit critique-often of a rival art form-and that any artist who "appropriates" another's work in this way invites us to apply a similar critique to him (or her).

5. Aeneas introduces himself, "I am Aeneas, duty-bound" (Aeneid I.519), and throughout the epic we are encouraged to think of him as a dutiful, if sometimes reluctant, hero. However, as we discussed in class, his actions at the very end of the poem are ethically ambiguous: Aeneas himself seems unsure whether or not he should kill Turnus, and his decision to do so is made spontaneously, on the basis of an environmental stimulus. Do you think Aeneas's decision to kill Turnus conforms with the definition of his "duty," as implied by the poem? Make an argument for or against, using evidence from the text. Be sure to address potential counter-arguments (also using evidence from the text). Fruitful places to look for such "evidence" (i.e., clues about the poem's ethical attitude): other "duel" scenes; other death scenes; statements made by authority figures (Jupiter, Anchises, narrator, Latinus?, Aeneas himself?); excurses on Roman history; anywhere the ethical value of killing, sparing, enmity, friendship, kinship, etc. is discussed.

Remember,
· Indicate on your paper whether you have selected Option 1 or Option 2.
· Number your pages after page one, and staple them together.
· Proofread and spellcheck.
· Documentation: Do not use any secondary sources; this paper is about your ideas, not anyone else's. For your quotations from the works we have read, provide citations using in-text parenthetical documentation, giving line no. for Vergil or page no. for Augustine, e.g.: (Aeneid XI.479-85) or (Conf. 267).

This essay is due at noon on Monday, February 18, to my mailbox in 708 Hamilton.

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