NOTE: These particular essays will not be set as exam questions in the examination paper. Overlap should be avoided between your pre-submitted essays and the questions you answer in the exam.

Non-assessed essay for Week 4, Term 1: What is an epic? (max. 1200 words)

Primary texts - Homer Iliad, Odyssey, Apollonius Argonautica, Ovid Metamorphoses, Virgil Aeneid. You may bring in other examples from later European literature if you wish: El Cid, Paradise Lost, Camoens The Lusiads, Derek Walcott Omeros.

Definitions: Aristotle Poetics, Horace Ars Poetica

Suggested reading:

Translators' introductions to above texts.

• 'Epic' entry in Oxford Classical Dictionary 3rd edn. (1996) and Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993)
• P. Merchant The Epic (London 1971)
• G. Nagy in M. Beissinger, J. Taylor and S. Wofford Epic traditions in the Contemporary World (California 1995)
• J. B. Hainsworth The Idea of Epic (Berkeley 1991)
• D. Feeney The Gods in Epic (Oxford 1991)
• P. Toohey Reading Epic (Routledge 1992)

You may also like to consider:

• M. M. Bakhtin 'Epic and novel' in The Dialogic Imagination (Austin 1981)
• W. Benjamin 'The Storyteller' in Illuminations (London 1999)

ASSESSED ESSAY 1

Deadline: 12 noon Monday 8th November 2010

Write an essay of approximately 2,500 words on ONE of the following subjects and hand it in to the departmental office (Room 224) by the deadline. Make sure your essay is only identified by your university number from you library card, and that a cover sheet is attached. Ensure that your pages are numbered and that you state a word-count. See dept handbook for further advice about writing and presenting essays.

Consult the individual bibilographies handed out at lectures and the module bibliography for guidance in your reading.

1. In what ways does Catullus 64 bring out the contrast between poetry and visual art?

2. Write a critical appreciation of either: a) Catullus 63 or b) Catullus 64 or c) Catullus 65 and 66 or d) Catullus 68.

3. Where do you see the influence of Homeric poetry in the Argonautica?

4. What makes the Argonautica Alexandrian?

5. What does Georgic 4.315ff have in common with Catullus 64?

6. Write a critical appreciation of Georgic 4.315ff.

ASSESSED ESSAY 2

Deadline: Wednesay 19th January 2011

Write an essay of approximately 2,500 words on ONE of the following subjects and hand it in to the departmental office (Room 224) by the deadline. Make sure your essay is only identified by your university number from you library card, and that a cover sheet is attached. Ensure that your pages are numbered and that you state a word-count. See dept handbook for further advice about writing and presenting essays.

Consult the individual bibilographies handed out at lectures and the module bibliography for guidance in your reading.

1. Compare and contrast the accounts of the metamorphoses in Metamorphoses 1.

2. Where can you see the influence of Alexandrian poetry on Ovid?

3. Latinists only: What features of Ovid’s poetic technique make the Metamorphoses worth reading in Latin (use books 1 and 8)?

4. How does Ovid parody epic in the Metamorphoses?

5. What is distinctive about Ovid’s manner of storytelling (use books 1 and 8)?

6. Is it appropriate to consider ‘epyllion’ as a genre? (Refer to at least two of the poets studied on the course in your answer.)