ASSIGNMENT How are quests or journeys to the underworld/afterlife portrayed in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Dante’s Inferno, and Homer’s Odyssey? Basically, discuss how each reading portrays what the main characters must confront in the different underworlds; why they must journey to the underworld, the purpose of their journey, and what they hope or expect to […]
Identify and explain another crux in the poem, selected from somewhere between Cantos VI and XXV. Find a particular moment of apparent ambiguity, ambivalence, and tension – a “crossroads” at which the reader must choose a direction to continue
Identifying Critical Cruxes: Engaging Ambiguity, Ambivalence, & Tension Much if not most academic writing involves the reasoned interpretation of texts, and such interpretation requires skill in distinguishing between dimensions of meaning that are clear, obvious, and straightforward and those that are more difficult, perplexing, or obscure. The interpretation of literary texts, in particular, often demands […]