Assignment.  Write a 750-1250 word essay doing a literary analysis explaining the significance of a single passage, scene, or episode in relation to the whole of one of the works of literature (or excerpts) from the course. Talk about the whole work, but focus on the one passage, scene, or episode to get at that.

Please do not depend on outside resources except a dictionary and perhaps the Bible.  This should be your own close reading of the work of literature.

Explanation.  One of the foundational skills in reading literature is reading a text closely and drawing meaning from that reading.  For this reason, this essay will allow you to engage deeply with a particular text.  A close reading of a text “unfolds” the text, explains in detail how the work communicates to the reader. Such a reading will require you to understand all aspects of the work and to have a grasp of the meaning of individual parts of the work in relation to the entire work. You are not, however, striving to be exhaustive in your “explanation,” but rather you should strive to be selective in considering only those details that are significant to your own thematic understanding of the piece of literature.

Literary readings for this class are Homer’s Iliad and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, The Dream of the Rood ,Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, and Arthurian Legend