Typed Response 2, EXPLICATION Also At

Typed Response 2, EXPLICATION also at http://users.ipfw.edu/flemingd/mythS09.html

DUE date: Thursday, February 19

In a brief, polished, concise essay of 1–2 pages (double spaced) explicate ONE of the follow passages. Your essay MUST contain the following information:

Identify the work it's from, the author, the rough time period. Explain what is it saying, how does it fit in with the immediate context of the story (identify the speaker, other important characters), how does it contribute meaning to the work as a whole? (some essential summary can be okay here). Identify the possible cultural context of the author. Finally – what importance does it have for our general study of myth? That is, why, of all the passages from the work that could have been reproduced in your book, was this one chosen?

All papers MUST answer all of these questions. Outstanding papers will answer all of these questions in thesis-guided organized essay using, smooth, concise, polished prose, with additional quotations where necessary. Outstanding papers will not at all read like a laundry list of the required information.

Include the passage and its PAGE NUMBER you are explicating at the top of your paper (single spaced, in smaller font if extra space is needed).

Keep in mind all the pointers on the first assignment sheet (also on the website).

PASSAGES:

·  "He took the white suet in his hands, but within him his heart raged with anger, as he saw that the tempting outside held the ox's white bones beneath. And ever since then, men of every race on the face of the earth burn the white bones on the altar in sacrifice to the immortals."

·  "Whoever keeps clear of marriage and the trouble fomented by women, and is quite content to stay single, must expect a gloomy old age, with no one at hand to attend him. He may have plenty of money, but when he dies, his relations often divide it."

·  “Around the bed-posts he draped his chain in voluptuous swirls, coiled directly over the bed, looping down from the rafters. Yet it was fine as a cobweb, not to be noticed by watchers, even the blessed gods, such skill went into its making.”

·  “This little child, who in fact is really a larcenous bandit, I found at the end of a tedious trip in the hills of Cyllenê, a cheat more plausible far than any I ever have seen, god or human or swindler, who walks on the face of the earth.”

·  "Never again could she claim, when immortals were gathered together, with a softly innocent smile, that she alone drove them to couple with mortal women, who bore them sons who were destined to perish, and deathless goddesses too she had driven to mate with mere humans."