Answer the following questions.

1. Dante “built” his version of hell utilizing rather equal measures of Roman Catholic doctrine and his own personal perspective regarding the guilt or innocence of the people he put there (his personal perspective seems sometimes rather vindictive). Pick one character who seems to be in hell for reasons the Catholic church of that time would approve, and one or two who seem to be there simply because Dante was “getting even.” Explain how this is so in each case using details from the poem as well as from whatever historical sources you wish to utilize.

2. lyrics poems are likely to have many characteristics in common with one another whenever and wherever they have been written. Certainly, the conditions of life in imperial China must have been in many ways quite different from the circumstances of life in Sappho’s Greece, or in the Nile Valley of the Egyptian love poems. Contrast their poetic styles, temperaments, subject matter, and general attitudes in a way that shows that you understand how it is that these poets are all lyric (not heroic) poets and yet quite different from one another in their personal concerns and poetic practices.

3. Which of the heroes (epic, or tragic) we’ve read about (Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Oedipus, Jesus, Rama, Kumagai or Atsumori, Lanval, Beowulf, Sir Gawain, Hamlet) comes closest to our contemporary concept of “heroic?” This answer will require you to define what you and your contemporaries consider “heroic,” if anything, as well as to detail the ways in which the character you’ve chosen measures up to that definition and the ways some of the others fail to measure up. Many very clever people have claimed that we live in an anti-heroic age (not believing in heroes any more at all.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Celestine turned down the papal seat for the monastery Always regarded as a humble man Celestine did not feel fit for the papacy and instead preferred to be a monk where he could focus on God alone ... View the full answer