CLST 272-003: Heroes and Classical Epics

CLST 272-003: Heroes and Classical Epics

Spring 2007
Dr. Jacqueline Long

Performances and Performance-Papers

Goals

To collaborate in a creative endeavor complementing course work
To experiment with performance of figures and stories from Classical epic
To share your insights with your classmates through performance
To reflect on the processes of insight, performance, and Classical epic, in light of a specific, shared creative experience
To have fun doing it

For the performance:

Members of the performance team, jointly in consultation with one another

select and adapt section(s) of the epic you have agreed to present
- pick important sections, and identify what makes them important and interesting
  - how do your selections advance the story?
  - what do your selections reveal about actions, characters, events, relationships, ideas, values, or other concerns to which the epic draws attention?
  - what resources of literary production do your selections use so as to do the things you identify them to be doing?
- feel free to adapt your selections creatively to make for an effective performance: connect, condense, transpose, enhance!
- incorporate into your performance significant, clearly accessible commentary on the insights you are presenting
  - It is appropriate to make use of published scholarly inquiries into our epics or related questions in order to inform your understanding of your team's books, and the choices you make in presenting interesting and valuable insights. This guide to Beginning Research on Topics in Classical Studies offers some strategic suggestions.
  - Books and articles cited in the introductions, notes, or bibliographies of Fagles's and Mandelbaum's translations (also Lattimore's, if you're using them) are good resources, as are items in Diotima. Titles are always a good first-look guide to the topic a study has taken for itself.
  - Do not limit your research to commercial products like Cliff Notes or Spark Notes. Some of them are better than others, but they are not always prepared with very good knowledge of the Classical cultures from which these works come, so they sometimes make really embarrassing errors. They also tend to oversimplify. All the same cautions apply to information posted on-line.
  - No matter what resources you use, you MUST credit them, all of them, appropriately when you go to write up your work in your paper. Otherwise it's plagiarism. Plagiarizers fail (see the statement on Academic Integrity under Policies, and resources there).
- your adapted selections will need to be performed in the classroom, with its resources, within 15-20 minutes of class time - we will be on a tight schedule, so presentations that run over will have to be cut off.
decide what members of the group will do to perform your selections, so as to bring out their interesting and important aspects and engage us all in an entertaining and illuminating experience
execute your plans

To hand in, at the class meeting of the performance:

Each member of the performance team, individually, compose and type up a 750-900-word essay (3 typed pages) explaining the following points. Write your report as an essay, defining and proving a brief but cogent central argument. One of the important purposes of this exercise is to give you practice writing good academic papers.

What significant ideas about the heroic world of the epic and techniques of epic story-telling do the section(s) you selected represent? What about them makes them important for understanding how the epic operates as a literary work?
How has your performance has been designed to display and experiment with these elements?
Support your explanations by referring to specific, concrete information, in the text you're working with and in your performance, and showing how it backs up the claims you are making.
Credit all secondary sources you use to inform and prepare your performance and paper. Again, it's a matter of maintaining your academic integrity, and again, you must do it in all your academic work. Bibliographic footnotes should use the form (for books) Firstname Lastname, Book Title (Place: Publisher, Year), specific pages for the information you're citing; (for articles) Firstname Lastname, "Article Title," Journal Title volume-numer (Year) page-range of the article within the journal: specific pages for the information you're citing.
Your primary source, that is, the text you're working with, needs to be cited too -whether you are paraphrasing or quoting- identify all passages you discuss by giving the book and line-numbers in parentheses. I'll assume you're using the Fagles and Mandelbaum translations officially ordered for this class, so if you're using a different one, please identify it in a footnote, too. Thanks!
And while we're on the subject of correct format, let me repeat here the plea that is urgent because it benefits YOU: Write as carefully as you can. Use complete sentences. Make sure they're formed grammatically. Use apostrophes correctly. Proofread. Even though I'm not grading for format specifically, sloppiness messes up the clarity of your ideas. The more you can use college-level writing to establish good habits of written expression, the better you will serve yourself in everything else you go on to do. If you feel wobbly on any of the skills involved, please come seek help: from me (come to my office hours with a draft, and we can work through it), from the Writing Centers (sponsored by the Department of English: graduate students with expertise in writing pedagogy; Sullivan Center 245 and on the Water Tower Campus in 25 East Pearson 605), and from the Tutoring Center (Sullivan Center; peer-counselors), for three starts. You are always welcome.

Thanks!

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Revised 3 April 2007 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu
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