honcolfinal10199

Final exam, HC 101 Due Wednesday, December 8, by 10:15 a.m. If you've completed the exam BEFORE that time, please bring it to the Honors College office and put it in my mailbox. I'll be in 314 Chapman from 9 a.m. Wednesday for hand-delivery of exams.

Take a two-hour block of time and answer either TWO questions (one hour per essay) or ONE question (two hours total). Specify by topic which essay(s) you've chosen. Maximum length: two blue books or four word-processed pages, typed double-space (approximately 500 words per essay). You may think about your essays ahead of time. Please keep in mind that the essays' purpose is to have you assess the interrelationships among our texts. Be as specific and complete as you can.

Heroism and the role of the hero: How human, or inhuman, is "the hero"? Are there different kinds of heroes? What accounts for our fascination with heroism?

Beowulf's glorious deed
was there on every tongue: they all said
that no other shield-bearer anywhere,
in the whole wide world from sea to sea
from north to south under the sky's dome,
was more deserving of a kingdom. . . . (Beowulf, lines 856-61, page 65)

Since tragedy is an imitation of people better than we are, one should imitate good portrait-painters. In rendering the individual form, they paint people as they are, but make them better-looking. In the same way the poet who is imitating people who are irascible or lazy or who have other traits of character of that sort should portray them as having these characteristics, but also as decent people. For example, Homer portrayed Achilles as both a good man and a paradigm of obstinacy. (Poetics 8.1 [Chapter 15], p. 25)

[Andromache speaking]: ‘Your father, remember, was no man of mercy. . . Not in the horror of battle, and that is why the whole city of Troy mourns you now, my Hector. . . .' (Iliad, Book 24, lines 870-3, p. 612)

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Honor: What defines honor? Is honor taken, given, traded? What limits honor? What is its cultural purpose?

Lanval gave costly gifts, Lanval freed prisoners, Lanval clothed the jongleurs [singing poets], Lanval performed many honorable acts. There was no one, stranger or friend, to whom he would not have given gifts. He experienced great joy and pleasure, for day or night he could see his beloved often and she was entirely at his command. ("Lanval," Lais of Marie de France, page 75)

[Mercury speaking] ‘What have you in mind? What hope, wasting your days in Libya? If future history's glories
Do not affect you, if you will not strive
For your own honor, think of Ascanius,
Think of the expectations of your heir,
Iulus, to whom the Italian realm, the land
Of Rome, are due.' (Aeneid 4. 265 or so, p. 105)

[Wiglaf speaking] ‘Each man
of your clan must forfeit his land-right,
wander in exile, once nobles learn
from afar of your cowardly flight,
inglorious deed. Death is better
for every warrior than living shame!' (Beowulf, ll. 2886-91, p.133)

[Achilles speaking] ‘No, you colossal, shameless--we all followed you, to please you, to fight for you, to win your honor
back from the Trojans--Menelaus and you, you dog-face!' (Iliad 1. 186-9, p. 82)

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Love, sensuality, and passion: Sometimes sensuality seems the center of human consciousness; sometimes it's condemned. How do you deal with the paradoxical way our texts treat the body and the senses?

In my case, the pleasures of lovers which we shared have been too sweet--they can never displease me, and can scarcely be banished from my thoughts. Wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and fantasies which will not even let me sleep. Even during the celebration of the Mass, when our prayers should be purer, lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on prayers. (Letters of Abelard and Heloise, p. 133)

Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before.
But then he drew himself up, for his understanding had broadened.
(Gilgamesh 1.183-4, p. 9)

The queen, for her part, all that evening ached
With longing that her heart's blood fed, a wound
Or inward fire eating her away. (Aeneid 4. 1-3, p. 95)

Imitation comes naturally to human beings from childhood. . . so does the universal pleasure in imitations. What happens in practice is evidence of this: we take delight in viewing the most accurate possible images of objects which in themselves cause distress when we see them. . . The reason for this is that understanding is extremely pleasant. . . . (Poetics 3.1, pages 6-7)

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Death: Why is literature so preoccupied with the portrait of death? How is that preoccupation expressed differently in our different texts? How does literature invest death with meaning, and what are those meanings?

No one can see death,
no one can see the face of death,
no one can hear the voice of death,
yet there is savage death that snaps off mankind . . .
The image of death cannot be depicted. (Gilgamesh 10. 290-303, p. 93)

[Beowulf speaking] ‘You are the last of our family,
the Waegmundings; fate has swept away
all my kinsmen, courageous warriors,
to their final doom; I must follow. (Beowulf, ll. 2813-16, p. 131)

Of all those seeming to succeed
count no one happy till he is dead. (Women of Troy, p. 479)

After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days. (Job 42: 16-17)

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Women: How are female characters portrayed in our texts? What do our texts indicate about female agency? How do you account for women's position in our texts?

[Helen speaking] ‘Maddening one, my Goddess, oh what now?
Lusting to lure me to my ruin yet again?
Where will you drive me next? . . .
Oh the torment--never-ending heartbreak!' (Iliad 3. 461-3, 478, p. 141)

. . . At once
men's fortunes turned when Grendel's mother|
trod within, though there was less terror
by as much as women's might and skill
in war compares with armed men's prowess . . . (Beowulf, ll. 1280-84)

HECUBA: I approve, Menelaus, of your killing your wife,
but don't let her near you or she'll entangle you again.
She rivets men's eyes, she topples cities, she burns down houses,
she casts such spells,
we know her well, you and I and all her other victims. (Women of Troy, p. 494)

Heloise then went on to the risks I should run in bringing her back, and argued that the name of mistress instead of wife would be dearer to her and more honorable for me--only love freely given should keep me for her, not the constriction of a marriage tie, and if we had to be parted for a time, we should find the joy of being together all the sweeter the rarer the meetings were. (Letters of Abelard and Heloise, p. 74)

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Fate and religion: What have our texts indicated is the difference between fate and free will, and the role of the divine in human affairs? What ties these concerns together?

[Agamemnon speaking] ‘But I am not to blame!
Zeus and Fate and the Fury stalking through the night,
they are the ones who drove that savage madness in my heart,
that day in assembly when I seized Achilles' prize--
on my own authority, true, but what could I do?' (Iliad 19. 100-5)

Then Job answered the Lord:
‘I know that you can do all things,
And that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.' (Job 42: 1-2)

When this plan is thought of as in the purity of God's understanding, it is called Providence, and when it is thought of with reference to all things, whose motion and order it controls, it is called by the name the ancients gave it, Fate. . . Providence is the divine reason itself. It is set at the head of all things and disposes al things. Fate, on the other hand, is the planned order inherent in things subject to change through the medium of which Providence binds everything in its own allotted place. Providence includes all things at the same time, however diverse or infinite, while Fate controls the motion of different individual things in different places and in different times. So this unfolding of the plan in time when brought together as a unified whole in the foresight of God's mind is Providence; and the same unified whole when dissolved and unfolded in the course of time is Fate. (Consolation of Philosophy 4. 6, page 135)

Anyone willing to listen to reason could profit from this cautionary tale. Evil can easily rebound on him who seeks another's misfortune. ("Equitan," Lais of Marie de France, p. 60)