General remarks:

The ideal essay will be roughly 3 pages, will focus on a limited topic in the Iliad, will cite specific evidence from the text to support statements, and will make incisive comments that draw together towards a persuasive conclusion (of course). I prefer that you focus on the Iliad (not the Epic of Gilgamesh). You can write on any topic you like, but make sure not to take on a topic too large for the length of the paper: a question like "the nature of the Homeric hero" is not an appropriate subject, since it's too big a topic; a question like "the nature of the heroic worldview of Hector as reflected in his visit to Troy" (essentially Van Nortwick's topic) would be better; "the nature of Hector's heroism as reflected in the contrast with his brother Paris" (a subtopic in Van Nortwick's lecture) would be best, since it's a well defined topic with clear limits. DO NOT simply repeat what I, or Thomas Van Nortwick, or any other critic has said about the poem. If you do choose to read critical interpretations, and these become incorporated in your discussion, DO cite the sources you have used.

1. The most exciting topic will be one of your own devising. It can be a development of a bright idea in one of your reaction papers; a topic from those discussed in class; a question drawn from your discussion questions; or something new. I strongly urge you to come talk to me about your paper topic. My office hours, to remind, are immediately after class on Tuesday & Thursday, and Wednesday 10-11. I am also usually in my office during the late afternoon from Monday through Thursday (until about 6 pm most days), if you'd like to chance dropping by. And I am happy to schedule an appointment.

2. I am happy to read drafts if you can produce one with enough time for me to react to it. Specifically: I will return by Monday any draft produced by this Friday, and I will try to turn around quickly drafts produced by next Monday. Any help on drafts later than that will have to be done orally in my office.

3. Following are a few suggestions for topics. You can pick one of these if the Muse is not with you. Or you can use these as a basis for inspiration, and come up with a related set of questions. Be sure in any case to make clear in the first paragraph of your essay what question or set of questions you will be addressing.

Some suggested topics:

1. What sorts of people, activities, thoughts are associated with physical boundaries such as the seashore? That is, if you look at the places in the Iliad where people go down to the seashore, what seems common about the circumstances? Does whatever you define as common in the emotions, thoughts, behavior make sense as something that an artist might want to associate with a physical boundary? [See under "resources" (below) for help with finding the passages.]

2. As a variant of question #1: study the places in the Iliad where there is an action "for nine days, but on the tenth day...." [See under "resources" (below) for help with finding the passages.]

3. If you were making a film of the Iliad how would you handle the scenery for the battle scenes? That is, think about this: how does Homer describe the battle landscape? And how might you convey this in film? And, if you were making a film, how would you then handle other aspects of the Iliad that are not obviously part of an action film, such as the extended similes? (A "simile" is an explicit comparison. In the Iliad a simile is often quite extensive, taking up many lines. Example: "Like the multitudinous nations of swarming insects / who drive hither and thither about the stalls of the sheepfold / in the season of spring when the milk splashes in the milk pails: / in such number the flowing-haired Achaeans....")

4. Take two or three of your favorite extended similes and examine what the extended similes seem to accomplish (aside from obvious things like relief from the battle, "vividness" of detail). Look in particular at the details of the simile itself: how does the scene (or the symbolism behind the scene) work in a way that is contrary to, as well as in keeping with, the flow of the main action? Look also at the broader context of the simile: does it seem to reflect, or comment on, things beyond the explicit item of comparison.

5. If one were to put the figure of Gilgamesh into Achilles' shoes in book 1 of the lliad, what would be different? That is, what would this mental exercise tell you about what is different about the idea of the principal hero in the Epic of Gilgamesh and in the Iliad, and about the ways that heroes interact in the two epics? Does that in turn tell you anything about the societies that produced the two poems?

6. Early on in the Iliad, as a warrior falls to the ground in his death throes, he is said to "couple with the dust." And in other ways it has been suggested (as by Van Nortwick) that the Iliad has an eerily strong relationship that it establishes between war (and especially death in battle) and sex. Pick a few examples to establish that this is true (if it is true), and analysis and explore why Homer sets up this correlation. (This is a biggish topic, so you'll have to limit yourself to a very few examples.)

Some resources:

For some of the suggested topics, or for topics of your own, you may find it useful to be able to search an English text of the Iliad for a given word or words. NOTE: this is a different translation than the one we use, so you may have to assemble synonyms of a given item or concept in order to find all the instances.

Search for an English word in the Iliad.

The English text of the Iliad from the Perseus Project.