Choose one of the questions below for your essay response, or discuss another topic of interest based on our class’ literary readings.
Choose one of the questions below for your essay response, or discuss another topic of interest based on our class’ literary readings. Your paper should be at least 6 typed, double-spaced pages. Remember to support your opinions by reference to the texts, and be sure to use 2 quotes per passage from the literary texts.
1. Dido is one of the many abandoned women in the literature of the world. Compare the emotions that contribute .to her extreme reactions to her situation with those of Medea.
2. Compare film director Francis Ford Coppola’s movie The Godfather to Virgil’s Aeneid: the clear distinctions between personal and business matters in The Godfather provide an interesting modern parallel to Aeneas’ public and private senses of duty. Be sure to quote from Virgil’s poem.
3. The original Star Wars movie (1977) offers a number of episodes that parallel the action of Virgil’s epic poem, in particular, the leaving of home in quest of self- and personal fulfillment, the loss of the father-mentor, and the final duel between the hero and his opponent. Compare director George Lucas’ famous movie with the Aeneid, and remember to quote from Virgil’s poem.
4. Much of Virgil’s method is Sophoclean; sisters Dido and Anna partly recall the sisters Antigone and Ismene in their differences. Furthermore, almost from the beginning of Book 2 of the Aeneid, as in Oedipus Rex, the shadow of the future is cast over the present, and the revelation of truth is gradual. Discuss the similarities portrayed in the Antigone/ Ismene relationship and in the Dido/Anna relationship.
5. Compare Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad (Book 18) with that of Aeneas’ shield in the Aeneid (Book 8).
6. Virgil deliberately models his epic poem on Homer; the first 6 books are Aeneas’ Odyssey, and the last six his Iliad. In what ways is Virgil’s poem an Iliadic Aeneid?
7. Compare/ contrast the role and influence of the gods in the Iliad and Aeneid.
8. Compare/contrast Homeric heroes and Virgil’s Aeneas. How does the Trojan Aeneas play the role of the Greek Achilles in the Aeneid 12?
9. Analyze the imagery of light and darkness in both Virgil’s epic and Dante’s Divine Comedy.
10. Why is Dante’s biography so vital in understanding the Divine Comedy? Can the political situation in Florence in Dante’s time fully explain what Dante is trying to do?
11. Although Dante says in Inferno 2 that he is not Aeneas, is there a way in which Dante in fact becomes Aeneas?
12. T.S. Eliot must largely be credited with the modern re-discovery of Dante’s “visual imagination”. Discuss Eliot’s use of imagery and other literary devices – based on the works of Virgil and Dante – in the famous 20th-century poem “The Wasteland.”
13. Does Dante the pilgrim undergo a transformation throughout the Inferno? Explain.
14. The triune (three-in-one) nature of Christian divinity – a single entity comprised of 3 aspects (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) – is the basis of structure and style in Dante’s poem. Dante was keen to instill the Trinity in every aspect of his poem. Elaborate on his use of this motif in the Inferno.
Answer preview to choose one of the questions below for your essay response, or discuss another topic of interest based on our class’ literary readings.
APA
1526 words
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