A Guide to Doing the Papers

Goals:

To have you engage in historia, research, and come to your own, independent view about some aspect of classical mythology.

To have you learn some of the basic strategies of academic writing, especially in the humanities.

To allow you to work through the material in such a way that you may appropriate it, i.e. make it your own (and remember it for the exam).

To have you come to the tutorial with a position on the material already staked out. (I’ll expect those who have written on the topic on any given day to speak for a couple minutes; that will form part of the evaluation.)

To have you develop your writing skills. If there are too many mechanical errors, I will ask you to correct and resubmit your paper in order to get a mark. For help, consult http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/

To have you work out some preliminary thoughts about a subject that you may want to take up in a more elaborate way in a senior course. This paper can form what we call an “abstract” for your future essay.

Procedure:

Do all of the assigned reading and take note of whatever may be relevant to the topic. Take some time to brainstorm: look for opportunities to compare and contrast; seek out key terms and concepts; think critically about the sources; anticipate objections.

Assume that your reader is another student in the class who has done the reading but has not given as much thought to the point you want to make. While you should use a formal, academic tone, there is no need to retell the story to this person.

Make a single, clear statement of the point you want to make (your thesis statement, which should be the first sentence of the paper), then back up that statement with arguments and specific information.

The first paragraph should give your argument in a nutshell. Do not cite specific evidence in it. Subsequent paragraphs should detail the argument. The conclusion may look beyond your paper to associated issues.

Do as much of the thinking as possible by yourself. Keep quotations short - they represent someone else’s thinking. Paraphrase rather than quote.

Keep the paper within 500 words.

Mechanics:

Put all identifying information (e.g. your name, the date) on one line at the top of the first page. Do not use a title page.

For any specific, disputable information or a quotation, cite your source. Since these are very short papers, do not use footnotes. For instance, if you use Homer for specific information, write (Il. 1.48) at the end of the sentence before the period to indicate that your information stems from the Iliad, book one, line 48. Do not bother with a bibliography.

Consider information gleaned from footnotes in your texts as background information. It can save you from errors, but it should not play an active role in your papers. The same is true for class lectures. That is, neither the footnotes nor the lectures should ever be cited. If specific information cannot be grounded on our texts, it should not appear in your papers.

Check the mechanics of your paper thoroughly for grammatical errors, spelling, and typographical mistakes. It is even better to ask a classmate to proofread your paper once you have done so. Feel free to pencil in changes on your typescript. The most common errors are comma splices, dangling modifiers, and confusions between “it’s” and “its”. Be aware that I tolerate split infinitives with difficulty.

Double space and use standard margins and font sizes, that is, 12 point.

Caveats:

When referring to events in a story that is in a text under discussion, use the present tense even if the text narrates them in the past tense.

Avoid saying much about the modern world. You may briefly illustrate a point by mentioning a modern parallel, but remember that you are writing about classical mythology. We are not interested in your views about the modern world (at least, not for this course).

Write nothing about yourself or your opinions; it wastes space. I know that what I’m reading represents your thoughts. Instead of writing “in my opinion,” write something like “it appears that” if you want to qualify a statement you are unsure of. Better yet, explain why the statement needs to be qualified.

Avoid trite conclusions such as those that claim that the classical world and the modern world are similar.

Avoid colloquialisms, slang, and contractions. Although you are writing as if to your classmates, keep a formal distance.

The spellings of classical names vary in this course as they do in our language in general. You need to get used to this fact. Some spellings are influenced by the literary transmission through Latin, while others attempt to transliterate Greek spellings directly. You don’t want to bother with all the details, and you can certainly use in your writing any spelling that appears in our course material. As rules of thumb, remember that C = K (Kastor/Castor), OI = OE (Oidipous/Oedipus), AI = AE (Aiskhylos/Aeschylus), and OS = US (Ouranos/Uranus).