Since titles often reflect theme, suggest a new title for Lysistrata that best reflects its theme. Then make an argument for your title based on what you take to be the play’s major idea(s). How does the theme relate to contemporary issues and life? What is your personal response to the theme?
Google “The Swing” and “Nude on a Sofa” by Rococo artists Fragonard and Boucher, and the neoclassical works “The Oath of the Horatii” and “La Grande Odalisque” by David and Ingres. Write a paper contrasting the amoral decadence and excess of the Rococo painters with the more serious and refined works of the Neoclassicists. Connect Rococo to the reign of Louis XVI and Neoclassicism to the rise of the philosophes and revolutionaries in France.
Compare carefully the opening lines of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. How does the opening of Virgil’s poem set itself apart from those earlier openings of Homer, which most of his readers could repeat by heart? How is Virgil’s introduction both alike and different from Homer’s? Especially, how does the opening of Virgil’s poem sound out themes that are unique to Roman culture, its historical role, and its age?
Define “sublime” as the romantics used the term. Google paintings by the British artists J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. Using these images, discuss how the paintings reflect the sublime sensibility central to the aesthetics of Romanticism.
Why is it so hard for Augustine to change his life? What finally causes his return or conversion to Christianity? Is this reason satisfying to you?
