UCLR 100C-002: Interpreting Literature - Classical Studies Personal Voices in Greek and Roman Literature Spring Semester 2024 Dr. Jacqueline Long Monday-Wednesday-Friday 9:20am-10:10am Life Science Building 412

Study Guide for Exam 3: Christian Self-Declaration

Format

• short identifications: basic information such as facts & terms, and brief statements of their relevance to our studies (small credit per item, but adding up to a significant component of the exam)
• passages of later-Roman Christian prose we have read: identify context and discuss in concrete specific terms important ideas in our study-material that the the selected passage illustrates most prominently about the writer or the literary form or the immediate topic(s - on its own or in relationship to the work as a whole) or the relationship the text creates for itself with its readers (each passage-essay earns a medium amount of credit, adding up to the biggest component of the exam)
• essay: discuss a thematic question, drawing for support of your contentions on specific, concrete evidence from the prose works we have studied (the thematic essay also earns a medium amount of credit; a significant component of the exam)

Goals

Tactics

• Literary texts represent human thought. They express ideas through words deployed both so as to convey meaning and so as to have aesthetic effect. They work in relationship to literary forms - genres - conventional in the literary communities that produce them, variously following and departing from precedents in ways that engage the expectations of audiences familiar with those communities' traditions. Literary texts thus invite interpretation.
• Concrete, specific answers display not only knowledge of texts assigned for the class, but also judgment identifying pertinent information within the texts, understanding why and how the information matters, and skill explaining.

Strategy

• We have shared attention discussing many significant elements and aspects of our material. They are not everything that could be important, but they open up connections to additional valuable insights - to attentive inquiry that brings knowledge and interest and thoughtful reasoning to bear on the texts.
• Think about how the different elements of our course-work serve the design of the class.
  • Recognize different kinds of inquiry we have explored: historical, cultural, social, feminist, aesthetic, literary-historical, rhetorical, theological. What different questions have we asked? How have different questions and different exercises opened up different ways of interpreting our texts?
  • Pursue significance: ask, "why does it matter?" Take your answers seriously. Be able to explain them. Be able to show what evidence supports them, and how.
  • Identify insights you have gained. Consider how you can carry them into both broader and deeper inquiries, and gain yet better understanding: capitalize on your learning.

This Study Guide is not a demand for universal absolute knowledge. It surveys course-material covered in this unit with the goal of helping you to assemble a representative sample of important ideas and illuminating passages. This reserve of dynamically correlated knowledge will equip you to make substantive connections, on an exam or in future: first-person narrative and reflection will never lose their potential for relevance - in or beyond the particular moments of Christian cultural development our two selected texts this semester represent. Use the Guide to help review. Are concepts familiar? Could you explain how they relate to our study-material, what makes the concepts important? What's a passage or two that makes a good illustration? With an overall view of our material sketched out, you will be ready to connect ideas and passages you have thought about to items on the exam.

Concepts, facts, and information all part of our material's context, discussed in class: be able both to identify the item, concisely and substantively, and to explain, briefly and concretely, why it is important for understanding our material. (The parenthetical notes are suggestions.)

• the authors whose works we've read (names, rough dates, biographical information we know that relates to important ideas or techniques in their writing)
• important figures in the prose works we've read (for example, Saturus, Dinocrates, Felicity, Monnica, Ambrose, Nebridius, Firminus)
• concepts used in literary analysis (such as allegory, apostrophe, autobiography, climax, crisis, fiction, focalization, genre, hyperbole, memoir, metaliterary, narrative, passion, persona, personification, prayer, programmatic, quotation, translation)
• terms relating to social constructs that may be reflected in literature (such as catechumen, cosmopolis, deacon, enslavement, gender, social protocols observed for different personal and to professional relationships)
• historical and cultural concerns relating to works we have studied (such as astrology, baptism, conversion, martyrdom, Manichaeism, materialism, Platonism, rhetoric)

• content
  • what images, visual or otherwise, are prominent in the work, or particular passage of a longer work? what effect do they create?
  • what emotions does the work evoke, or particular passage of a longer work? how? what does it do with them?
  • what characters does the work present? how does it portray them: what sorts of person do they seem to be, and by what means does the work suggest they are such sorts of person?
  • does the work give a sense of a particular person speaking through the work, either a sensibility engaged with the events & activities described as a participant, or the person who did participate at the time now looking back from a different perspective as author, or a non-participant thinking about participants? how?
  • what ideas does the work talk about, or particular passage of a longer work? how does the work or passage fit its ideas into a relationship of persona and audience? consider both particular, concrete ideas the work addresses directly and broader themes it suggests more indirectly.
  • how is the work organized? how does that organization unfold as the work is being delivered - how does the organization shape the audience's experience of the work?
  • does the work, or certain passages within a larger work, tell a story? how?
  • besides story-telling, in what other modalities does the work deliver its content? how do the work's story-telling and its other modalities connect to one another?
• literary form
  • what literary form(s) or tradition(s) does the work invite its audiences to make reference to, in some kind of dialogue with the particular work itself? how? how does the work set itself in line with and/or against expectations?
  • what impulses, personal or otherwise, does the writer suggest produce this work? by what means does the writer/persona suggest those impulses operate?
  • what does the writer suggest this work in does to its audiences? how?
• society
  • how does the work portray relationships between the individuals it includes, and the larger communities to which they belong? what types of relationship are important in the work?
  • how does the work fit itself into relationship with the community of its readers?
  • what conduct and what values does the work recommend? for what reasons? by what means does the work make its recommendations?
• the cosmos
  • how does the work suggest that natural forces relate to human life?
  • how does the work suggest that divinity relates to human life?
  • how does the work suggest, or recommend, that humans understand their relationship to the natural and divine world around them?

Strategic advice for exam-writing

• Identifications come across especially clearly and convincingly when you back them up by mentioning a specific point in one of our texts that illustrates your point. Be sure to explain why the item being identified is important in the context of our inquiry into the texts.
• In both passage-essays and topic-essays, be sure to explain clearly how your ideas work and why they matter.
• Show the evidence that supports your argument. Explain your reasoning clearly, logical step by logical step. Take your reader with you, in order to persuade.
• With passage-essays, you've got text right there in which you can anchor your discussion very specifically. Take advantage of this resource for concreteness and detail.
• Connect the dots: when you want to add a passage to your discussion, in support of your interpretations or for comparison, show what makes it relevant - then when you explain what's going on in it, it will also help support your central argument.
• Building on discussions we've had in class and taking even further the understanding we've established together, shows how you are growing your own learning. It makes exam papers truly exciting. Education aims above all for you to develop your knowledge, skills, confidence, and the interest to claim an inquiry for yourself. Go for it!

Revised 22 April 2024 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/