Pasts and Presences: An Introduction to the Humanities in the West Mount Holyoke College Peter Berek, Fall 2002 I-114F

      What is your understanding of the relationship between Prince Hal's understanding of himself and presentation of himself in Henry IV, Part 1? Does King Henry V show the same kind of self-understanding and engage in the same kind of self-presentation? As you prepare to write your paper, you should think about whether "selfhood" means the same thing in these two Shakespeare plays as in does in the David story. You may if you wish choose to refer briefly to the David story, but your focus in the paper should be on the two Shakespeare plays. You must ground your argument in discussion of specific scenes and speeches, and you should not fear to express judgments-whether admiring or critical-of the prince and the king.

      How is the Hebrew Bible's portrayal of Judith like and unlike its portrayal of David? That's your general topic for this paper, but you need to give the topic more focus than this sentence provides. Each character exists in a world of other characters. For example, David as king emerges from a world that also includes Samuel and Saul and non-Israelite enemies such as the Philistines. Judith inhabits a narrative world in which Nabuchodonosor is the great king (perhaps even a kind of god) and Holofernes the immediate representative of adversarial power. You may want to think about how the nationhood of Israel seems different in Judith than in 1 and 2 Samuel; you may come to believe that the two narratives involve different conceptions of God. David and Judith are both violent; David and Judith are both cunning. Neither invariably tells the truth. Both are sexually attractive, but they have different genders. Saul's court, and David's, are very different from Nineveh or Ecbatane or Bethulia. David lives a long life rich in incidents; the Judith story tells us much about ancient Middle Eastern imperialism, but gives us only one incident from Judith's life.

      You may want to think about all these issues, but you can't possibly write about them all. A successful essay will narrow its focus, perhaps by choosing a single exemplary incident from David's career to compare to the key incident of Judith's heroic (and sometimes comic) achievement.

      In the Iliad, there seem to be clear patterns to the way characters--or at least warriors--present themselves to others. Everyone seems to know the same rules. But only rarely do we come to believe that a character develops or changes his understanding of himself. Perhaps the most striking example of a change in self-understanding comes in the meeting in Book 24 between Achilles and Priam.

      Self-presentation and self-understanding are quite different in the Hebrew Bible, and the stories of Samuel, Saul and David are different from the story of Achilles. Even though we are in the early stages of reading 1 and 2 Samuel, it's worth beginning to speculate about the differences between the Iliad and the book of Samuel. Choose an event or incident 1 or 2 Samuel in which you can contrast the self-presentation and self-understanding of a Biblical character with that of Achilles or Priam when they meet and speak in Book 24. For example, can you distinguish self-understanding from self-presentation in the career of the prophet Samuel? How is Saul as he becomes king, and as he tries to sustain his throne against the Philistines and against the rising popularity of David, like and unlike Achilles? Does David present himself to others in the same way that he understands himself? When is self-presentation part of a political strategy? Do changes in self-understanding involve changes in a character's relationship with God?

      You probably won't be ready to offer fully developed answers to questions like these, if only because you still haven't read the whole David story. But you ought to be able to make some clear arguments about Homer and to offer some observations or speculations about the moments in the Bible you choose to discuss. The thesis of your paper may be about defining an issue or a question rather than asserting a conclusion.

      The Iliad is in some ways a fairly straightforward story about the rage of Achilles and the last days of the Trojan War. But the manner in which the poem tells the story often leads us to have complex responses to a single moment or episode. Though the poem is long, some of its details reward very close attention.

      In this paper, you should select several extended similes-"heroic" or "epic similes," as they are often called-and show how the similes complicate your understandings of the events or characters for which they provide comparisons. You should select several similes used for a single important character or for that character's deeds and show how they shape your emerging understanding of that man, woman or god or goddess. Make sure your paper has a thesis; it should not just be a sequential analysis of a number of similes.

     Book Ten of the Iliad describes a nighttime expedition by Diomedes and Odysseus to scout the Trojan camp. They meet Dolon, who is engaged in a similar expedition against the Achaeans on behalf of Troy. (The account begins on p. 283 and extends though the end of the book on p. 295.)

     What counts as heroism in this episode? How do you know? Do the poem's standards agree with your own?

     Who is Joan of Arc, and what did she do? Is she a hero? By what standards do you decide?

     Answer these questions in a one-page, double-spaced essay. I don't expect you to do any research about Joan-you should write an essay that reflects what you know today, not what you may learn later about either Joan or heroism.