Construct a carefully written argument in response to one of the following questions. Your paper should be double-spaced and 1,250-1,500 words in length, using 1″ margins and a 12-point font. Be sure to number your pages and to put your name on each page. In the upper left-hand corner of the first page, please put your name, the name of your professor, the course, and the date. Then skip one or two lines and give your paper a title. The title should reflect your argument and allude to the text and/or author you are writing about. Do not make a separate title page. All references to the text (and there of course should be references to and quotations from the text) should be based on the edition/translation used in class. Cite the text parenthetically. In citing St. Augustine’s Confessions A new translation by Henry Chadwick , cite by book number, section number, and paragraph number, as well as the page number of the translation (see examples in questions 7 and 9 below). Cite the Aeneid parenthetically as follows: (book.line numbers, page number-see question 1 below). When you make an in-text quotation of lines that are in verse (as in Virgil), please mark the line endings with a /. When you make an indented quotation of verse lines, simply reproduce the lines exactly as they appear in the printed text, with line endings marked by a return (The Aeneid is translated into blank verse-unrhymed iambic pentameter in the translation we are using). Please include a “Works Cited” page with your paper, using correct bibliographical formatting (MLA or Chicago-guides to these bibliographical formats are available through the University library’s website). The paper is due on Tuesday, October 22, by 11:59pm. Please submit your paper through the Canvas portal. If you would like me to read a draft, please send it at the latest by Saturday night, Oct. 18 (Word document attachments only).
As you develop your argument, try to think of a problem in the text you are considering to which you propose a solution (your thesis) requiring proof (textual detail), which you then, body paragraph by body paragraph, marshal in support of your solution. Test whether you have found an adequately meaningful problem and solution by asking yourself whether an intelligent reader of the text you are writing about would need to be persuaded in order to agree with your claim. If persuasion is necessary, and possible, you have come up with an adequately contestable thesis. In all cases, avoid writing a paper that simply retells the plot of the poem or narrative. You are writing for an audience that is already familiar with the book, so a retelling of the plot, no matter how eloquent, will not be compelling.