This assignment asks you to engage in the close reading of a text and write an argumentative essay in response to the question posed by a prompt. Your argument should be an answer to the question posed, and you will need to provide textual evidence through citations to support your answer and explain your reasoning. This argument should be based on the primary text(s) referenced in your chosen prompt; there should be no citations of or references to secondary scholarship in your paper.
The impact of the final paper grade on your semester grade is explained in the Final Paper section of the Grading page.
Thursday, December 19, at 2pm, via upload portal or hard copy in the box on my office door (Fenwick 426).
5-6 pages, double-spaced.
When grading this assignment, I will be looking for:
You are free to come to my office hours or set up an appointment to discuss your chosen prompt or how to structure your paper. I am willing to read and offer suggestions on paper drafts, but you are not required to run a draft by me before the paper’s due date. I will not accept any drafts after 5pm on Sunday, 12/15, to ensure that I can give you back my comments in a timely fashion before the paper’s due date.
You can also make an appointment with the Writer’s Workshop; there, they can help you with organizing your thoughts and structuring your argument.
Citations of primary source material (meaning the actual text of the author, and not introductions by an editor, footnotes, etc.) are necessary to support the claim that you are making in your argument. You should not cite material that is self-evident or that doesn’t bear on your argument.
You may use the primary source(s) referenced in the prompt as evidence. You may not use secondary sources, including but not limited to introductions or footnotes by an editor, commentaries, scholarly articles, book chapters, or websites. The goal of this assignment is to make your own argument and substantiate it with evidence from primary texts; I want to know what you think, not what some other scholar thinks!
You are required to cite primary source material at least three (3) times in your paper for prompts 1-4 and 6-8. For prompt 5, you are required to cite at least five (5) inscriptions or graffiti. This may involve either a direct quotation or simply a paraphrase. You may cite more if your argument requires it, but keep in mind that I’m looking to see that you’re analyzing and engaging with the source in your citation, not simply regurgitating the information.
Each prompt will have a slightly different citation format; see the specifics under each prompt.
Cite by the Aeneid’s book and line number. An example:
Turnus asks Aeneas for mercy: “You’ve triumphed: the Italians see me asking / For mercy, and Lavinia is your wife. / Lay down your hatred” (12.1249-1251).
OR
At 12.1249-1251, Turnus asks Aeneas for mercy: “You’ve triumphed: the Italians see me asking / For mercy, and Lavinia is your wife. / Lay down your hatred.”
Cite only by line number of the Casina. An example:
Myrrhina comments metatheatrically on their ruse: “No playwright has ever devised a better / Plot than this clever production of ours” (860-861).
Cite BOTH by chapter number AND the page reference in Hackett. For example:
Livy explains where the “she-wolf” of the story of Romulus and Remus may have originated: “There are some who think that this miraculous story originated because Larentia was called ‘she-wolf’ among the shepherd community, since she had been a prostitute” (4; Hackett, p. 147).
Cite BOTH by chapter number AND the page reference in Hackett. For example:
Augustus describes how he established colonies all around the Mediterranean, including twenty-eight colonies in Italy (28; Hackett, p. 21).
Cite by the inscription or graffito number in Hackett with subsection number, if applicable. For example,
In the Praise of Turia, the husband praises Turia’s many good qualities with an instance of praeteritio: “Your domestic virtues — modesty, obedience, kindness, even temper, eagerness for working wool, religious reverence free from superstition, humbleness in your use of adornment, modesty in your style of dress — why should I mention them?” (1.1)
Inscription 45 laments a young baby who died after only 9 months of life: “Here lies a pitiable infant stolen from her mother’s arms before she had lived nine full circuits of the moon. Her grieving mother and father weep for her as she lies, little body enclosed in a marble tomb.”
Cite by work name and page number. Examples:
Pygmalion sculpts a perfect woman, literally objectified as a statue: “But meanwhile / He made, with marvelous art, an ivory statue, / As white as snow, and gave it greater beauty / Than any girl could have, and fell in love / with his own workmanship” (Metamorphoses, p. 242).
Cite by book number and chapter number. For example:
Lucius begs Isis to restore his human form: “Let my sufferings, my dangers so far suffice. Drive off from me this hateful four-footed configuration, return me to the sight of my people, give me back myself, Lucius” (11.2).
Cite by chapter number. For example:
Tacitus ends the Agricola with a promise of immortality for Agricola: “Agricola will survive, his story told and transmitted to posterity” (46).