Topics for final exam

1.“I hate and love. And if you should ask how I can do both/’ I couldn’t say; but I feel it; and it shivers me” (Catullus): mixed feelings and what they mean

2.Pietas: love as/versus duty to family, nation, gods

3.“We women are most unfortunate creatures...” (Medea 225) gender contention, the battle of the sexes

4.Love and/as war: opposition/antidote to war; Love as metaphor for war, battle for control, strategy, conquest

5.Home: leaving, returning, creating, preserving, longing-for, defending…

6.Betrayal: disobedience, dishonor, anti-xenia, blasphemy…

7.Innocence & experience: youth/age, maturation, getting-of-wisdom

8. Heavenly and vulgar Aphrodite: love and lust, conjugal and extramarital love, “good woman” and “bad woman,”

9.Love as ascent, love as descent: the ladder of love vs. falling in love;

10.Love and “The Other World”: Olympus, Hades, the realm of Forms, the kingdom of heaven

Choose one of these ten topics and speakers in (or the narrator of) five of the works by the fifteen authors we've considered. Create a brief Symposium-like frame-story in which the five speakers get together and discuss connections between Love and the topic you've chosen. This essay is to be 1500-1700 words (about six double-spaced typed pages) in length. It is due Friday March 17 in our classroom at 1:10 p.m. It can be submitted to each of the instructor's office any time before then.