Ovid & the English Renaissance is a writing-intensive class. Over the course of the semester, students will write three essays, each 1500 to 2000 words in length. A detailed prompt, as well as a grading rubric, will be circulated well in advance of each due date.
SUBMITTING & FORMATTING
All essays should be emailed as MS Word documents to both instructors.
Essays must be received by 11:59 PM on the days they are due in order to be considered for full credit. Late submissions will lose one-third of a letter grade every day until they are received. After one week of lateness, essays will no longer be accepted.
All essays must be presented professionally. That is, they must have
- Standard 12-point fonts, such as Times, Garamond or Calibri.
- Double-spacing.
- 1.25-inch margins.
- Footers with page numbers and your last name.
- Word counts between 1500 and 2000 words.
Essays that ignore these requirements will be penalized.
GRADING
Both instructors will read all three papers, with Professor Bozio and Professor Curley trading off on being your primary or secondary reader throughout the semester. Papers will be evaluated according to a standard rubric created by the instructors, who will bear joint responsibility for assigning grades.
View the grading rubric here.
ESSAY I
Due Sunday, February 23
Advance an argument about one or more of the texts, themes, and questions that we have studied in the first section of the course. Your approach will probably fall within one of these three categories:
- Focusing exclusively on Ovid’s poetry.
- Focusing exclusively on the work of one or more early modern poets.
- Reading Ovid and early modern poets in dialogue with one another.
Regardless of which approach you take, engage with multiple texts from this section of the class and ideally with one or more of the themes and questions that we have considered. In addition, use close reading to support your argument (see below).
Recommendations
Have a thesis or a motivating question. Write a cogent introduction, one that defines the issue you want to discuss in the paper, and that ends with a clear thesis and method statement. Be sure the introduction and the paper align with one another.
Use close reading to support your claims. Rather than citing a passage and repeating its literal meaning, you should draw the reader’s attention to specific images, turns of phrases, or other significant elements in order to make your argument. Be sure to cite texts with line numbers and, where appropriate, book and poem numbers.
Use secondary sources if relevant. Secondary sources are not required for this assignment, but might be helpful, especially if you make historical/contextual claims in support of your thesis.
Finally, follow the submitting and formatting requirements at the top of this page.
ESSAY II
Due Sunday, April 5
Advance an argument about one or more of the texts, themes, and intersections that we have studied in the second section of the course. Your approach will probably fall within one of these three categories:
- Focusing exclusively on Ovid’s poetry.
- Focusing exclusively on Galatea or Titus Andronicus.
- Reading Ovid and one of the two early modern plays in dialogue with one another.
Regardless of which approach you take, engage with multiple texts from this section of the class and ideally with one or more of the themes and intersections that we have considered. In addition, use close reading to support your argument.
Themes & intersections
Your paper might address one or more of the following:
- Genre: form, content, and poetics
- Desire in elegy, epic, and drama
- Embracing nature
- Spectacle and spectacularity
- Rhetorics of desperation and motivation
- Formulating and executing revenge
- Depictions of gods
- Human folly / divine agency
- Race, ethnicity and additional forms of Otherness
- Gender: construction, performance, and politics
- Iphis and Ianthe / Galatea and Phillida
- Philomela and Lavinia
Whatever your topic, we expect your argument to be rigorous, sophisticated, and above all coherent.
Recommendations
Have a thesis or a motivating question. Write a cogent introduction, one that defines the issue you want to discuss in the paper, and that ends with a clear thesis and method statement. Be sure the introduction and the paper align with one another.
Use close reading to support your claims. Rather than citing a passage and repeating its literal meaning, you should draw the reader’s attention to specific images, turns of phrases, or other significant elements in order to make your argument. Be sure to cite texts with line numbers and, where appropriate, book and poem numbers.
Use secondary sources if relevant. Secondary sources are not required for this assignment, but might be helpful, especially if you make historical/contextual claims in support of your thesis.
Finally, follow the submitting and formatting requirements at the top of this page.
ESSAY III
Due Sunday, May 3
Advance an argument about one or more of the texts, themes, and intersections that we have studied in the second section of the course. Your approach will probably fall within one of these three categories:
- Focusing exclusively on Ovid’s poetry.
- Focusing exclusively on A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Poetaster.
- Reading Ovid and one of the two early modern plays in dialogue with one another.
Regardless of which approach you take, engage with multiple texts from this section of the class and ideally with one or more of the themes and intersections that we have considered. In addition, use close reading to support your argument.
Themes & intersections
Your paper might address one or more of the following:
- Genre: form, content, and poetics
- Spectacle and spectacularity
- Theatricality and locality
- Poetic careers
- The purposes of poetry
- Text versus performance, esp. Midsummer.
- Ovid’s Pyramus & Thisbe / Shakespeare’s Pyramus & Thisbe
- Ovid’s Corinna / Jonson’s Julia
- Ovid’s Ovid / Jonson’s Ovid
Whatever your topic, we expect your argument to be rigorous, sophisticated, and above all coherent.
Recommendations
Have a thesis or a motivating question. Write a cogent introduction, one that defines the issue you want to discuss in the paper, and that ends with a clear thesis and method statement. Be sure the introduction and the paper align with one another.
Use close reading to support your claims. Rather than citing a passage and repeating its literal meaning, you should draw the reader’s attention to specific images, turns of phrases, or other significant elements in order to make your argument. Be sure to cite texts with line numbers and, where appropriate, book and poem numbers.
Use secondary sources if relevant. Secondary sources are not required for this assignment, but might be helpful, especially if you make historical/contextual claims in support of your thesis.
Finally, follow the submitting and formatting requirements at the top of this page.
