Anatomies of Change
Winter Quarter 2004-05

 

Paper One :

First Paper Assignment: Anatomies of Change Winter 2005

Due Thursday, February 3, 11 a.m.

Wr ite a four to five page paper on Gilgamesh or one of the plays of Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Although your focus should be on one of these four texts, you may include in your paper pertinent references to other texts we’ve studied—the “Darmok” episode, say, or the other plays of Aeschylus’s trilogy; you may treat the Oresteia as one text with your TF’s approval.

Develop a thesis that posits a specific, debatable argument deriving from your analysis of the text provoked by one of the prompts below. Be sure not merely to summarize key points from the text, and avoid generalizations that cannot be supported readily with textual evidence. Avoid merely reiterating ideas from lecture and/or section, use specific quotations to support your claims, and ensure that all your claims work together to develop a unified argument. Your paper will be graded on its focus, depth of thought, and expository competence as per the grading guidelines—not on the number of ideas you present. Various handouts on writing and formatting academic papers are available on our course web site.

Papers should be double-spaced, using times or times new roman 12-point font, non-justified, with one-inch margins, and page numbers. Please include the title, your name, your TF’s name, and the date, single-spaced, at the top right of your paper.

Papers are due at the BEGINNING of lecture on February 3. You must submit your paper both as a hard copy andas anemail attachment to your section leader by the deadline. Please name your email attachments with your section and name as in the following example: 08SmithJohnPaper1.doc

• Professor Rayner has suggested that stories of origins are almost always mythical. In other words, what may be construed as historical realities may involve something mythical. (There may have been a real “builder of cities” named Gilgamesh about 5000 years ago, but perhaps he wasn’t 2/3 god and 1/3 human, and so on.) Examine Rayner’s claim in relation to one of the “stories of origin” we’ve discussed, such as the creation of “human” (Gilgamesh, Enkidu), the creation or autobiography of Gilgamesh, the flood story, the institution of human law in the Oresteia, the generations of bloodshed in the house of Atreus, and so on. You might consider the role of naming and/or defining things, of metaphor, etiological aspects, and so on.
• Both Gilgamesh and the Oresteia are concerned with what constitutes the “human” and/or the “civilized.” Explain what elements are involved in defining these notions (i.e. social relations, conscious knowledge, a moral conscience, etc.), how those elements are determined (i.e. “What are the antitheses of the human and/or the civilized?” “Through what processes do the characters acquire humanity and civilization?” etc.), and their consequences within the text.
• Both Gilgamesh and the Oresteia are concerned with how the self relates, and perhaps is defined in relation, to other selves. Focusing on one relationship between two characters (for instance, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Orestes and Electra, Orestes and Clytemnestra) or one character’s or group’s relationship with a specific set of others (humans and gods, friends and enemies, male and female, young and old, for example), examine how this relationship shapes the characters in question and how this in turn sheds light on larger issues in the text.
• Retribution is a central element of both Gilgamesh and the Oresteia. Select one of our texts to develop an argument about the function and significance of retribution in that text. Among the issues you might consider are: the relationship between justice and revenge; whether and how the text describes conflicting notions of retribution and/or justice, what rules underlie those notions, and how such views may interact; to what extent text may encourage us to value one over the other; to what extent may the text treat human forms of justice and/or revenge differently from divine retribution.

Happy writing!