A. General Information 1)
The Essay Draft is the first, graded draft of an essay that you will later revise and submit as the Revised Essay (which is due on Thursday, November 14). 2) You will revise the Essay Draft and submit it as the Revised Essay based on the comments made by your instructor on your graded Essay Draft. 3) The Essay Draft must be at least 1500 words long. It must not be shorter than 1500 words, and it should not be more than 2000 words. 4) Please include the following information at the top of the first page of your assignment: Essay Draft name CLT3378-02, Fall 2019 word count 5) The Essay Draft should be submitted in two formats: a. as a paper copy in class on Thursday, October 10. b. as a digital copy to the Turnitin link for Essay Draft under Assignments by 11:59 pm on Thursday, October 10. 6) Both the paper copy and the digital copy should be Microsoft WORD documents, double spaced, in 12 point font, and with 1 inch margins on the right and left of the text. 7) In order for your Essay Draft to be graded, students must submit both the paper and digital copies. 8) For the Essay Draft, you will compare (and/or contrast; i.e., you can look just at similarities or differences or at both) a modern work with an ancient work (from List A below). 9) Select one modern work (a movie, a TV show, a book, a poem, a song, etc.) that can be compared with an ancient work (from List A). 10) Compare and/or contrast this work with one of the following ancient works (in List A) that we have read and/or discussed this semester. You must use one of the works in List A: LIST A (Acceptable Works) The Enuma Elish The Anansi myths The Tale of Tulisa The Baal Cycle The Raven myths The Epic of Gilgamesh Atrahasis The Coyote myth The Tale of Buluqiya 2 You may NOT use any of the following works: LIST B (Unacceptable Works) Genesis or any other part of the Bible Hesiod’s Theogony Apollodorus’ Library Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche Beowulf English, German, or Hungarian folktales (Rose Tree; Juniper Tree; Singing, Soaring Lark; Crow’s Nest) The Prose Edda and Norse myths B. Writing Guidelines 1) You must come up with your own thesis statement for the Essay Draft. A thesis statement is an argument. The simplest thesis statements would be something like, “There are many differences between A and B” or “While there are some differences between A and B, there are also some striking similarities.” More specific thesis statements, however, are more interesting and generally help you write better essays. 2) This is an essay, not a research paper. You should not do any outside research (especially on the internet; see next entry). All you need for the essay are the one modern work you have chosen and the one ancient work we have read in class. 3) Important: Beware of information you find on the web! It is often wrong, and it will be obvious to your grader that you got your information from the web and not from the assigned myths and readings. If you depend on the web for the information in your essays, your grade will suffer. 4) Read very carefully the List of Errors for Essays file. These are the errors that will be noted for you when your instructor returns to you your graded essay. The more of these errors you can avoid, the higher the grade on your Essay Draft will likely be. C. Common Grading Rubric 1) Be sure to read carefully the Common Grading Rubric file. This is the rubric upon which essay grading is ultimately based for all sections of CLT3378 (Ancient Mythology), regardless of section, semester, or instructor. (The List of Errors builds upon this grading rubric.) 2) Pay especially close attention to what the requirements are for the “A/A-” paper: “Mechanics: Sentence structure, grammar, and diction excellent; correct use of punctuation and citation style; minimal to no spelling errors; absolutely no run-on sentences or comma splices.” This means that if there are more than a very few spelling or grammatical errors in your essay, you CANNOT receive an A or A-. 3 3) Therefore, in order to give yourself at least the chance to receive the best possible grade on your essay, make sure your essay has as few spelling or grammatical errors as possible! For your essay, be sure to use “spell check” on your computer. But also read your essay aloud several times and try to catch any remaining spelling or grammatical errors. Be sure also to read the How to Avoid the Most Common Grammatical Errors file. D. Structure of Essay Draft 1) Your Essay Draft should consist of: 1. an introductory paragraph (with your thesis statement) 2. at least three supporting paragraphs (each with a subthesis statement) 3. a concluding paragraph 2) Each paragraph of your essay must have at least five (5) sentences (although you will usually want to have more than five sentences in a paragraph). 3) Your thesis statement must appear in the opening paragraph of your essay. The following paragraphs must support this thesis or argument. 4) Each supporting paragraph must have a unique thesis statement of its own that should serve as a subthesis to the main thesis of the paper. Each subthesis must help support the main thesis of your essay. A subthesis must be the first one or two sentences of a given supporting paragraph. 5) In each supporting paragraph of your essay, you must discuss both works that you have chosen, both the modern and the ancient works. 6) The best subtheses focus on a single similarity or a single difference. For example, a subthesis could be: “One similarity between the stories of Buluqiya and of Frodo is that in both stories there is a magic ring.” Or for a difference, the subthesis could be: “While Buluqiya wants to find the magic ring so that he can have it for himself, Frodo wants to destroy the magic ring he already has.” 7) You must indicate exactly what kind of work your modern western work is. That is to say, if you have chosen Beauty and the Beast, you must tell the reader (usually in the introductory paragraph) that this is the Disney movie (whether the 1991 one or the 2017 one) or that this is some other telling of the story (such as the folktale upon which the movies are based). The reader should not have to guess what kind of work you are discussing. 8) If you are using a series (e.g., book, movie, or TV), you must indicate which book/movie/episode you are discussing in your essay. This means you do need the titles of individual episodes of a TV show (such as South Park). 4 9) Each subthesis must refer in some way to both works that you have chosen, both the modern and the ancient works. 10) DO NOT DIVIDE SUPPORTING PARAGRAPHS IN TWO! For the purposes of this assignment, it does not matter how long supporting paragraphs are (although if a supporting paragraph is much over a page in length, then your subthesis is likely too general). Make sure you discuss BOTH works in each supporting paragraph, and make sure you have at least one quotation from BOTH works in each supporting paragraph. If you divide supporting paragraphs in two (i.e., if you discuss the Epic of Gilgamesh in one paragraph and the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban book in another), you WILL lose points on your Essay Draft. 11) In each supporting paragraph of your essay, you must give at least ONE QUOTATION from the modern work and at least ONE QUOTATION from the ancient work you have chosen. You must demonstrate to the reader that you have watched/listened to/read and carefully thought about the works in question. This means that even if your modern, western work is a movie, for example, you will still need to directly quote dialogue, song, or spoken narration from that movie. (The only exception to this is if your modern work has little to no dialogue, such as a graphic novel that is mainly images or a mostly or totally silent movie. In these rare cases, you would need to describe the [silent] scene you are discussing in detail to the reader instead of providing a quotation for that particular scene.) 12) See the Guide to Quotations file for more information about how to give quotations in your essay. 13) Thus, a formula for writing a suppo rting paragraph is: a) subthesis mentioning both works and focusing on a single similarity or difference b) sentence introducing first quotation c) first quotation (from a Raven myth, for example) d) sentence explaining why first quotation is significant for subthesis e) sentence introducing second quotation f) second quotation (from a South Park episode, for example) g) sentence explaining why second quotation is significant for subthesis 14) For further examples, read the Sample Paragraphs for Essays file. 15) The concluding paragraph should NOT just be a summary of your essay as whole. It should contain thoughts that you have not yet made in your essay. It should build upon what you have already said, but it should contain something new. 16) One way to go about writing your concluding paragraph is to talk about what the myths/works in your essay tell us about the one modern and the one ancient culture that you are discussing. 17) You do NOT need a works cited page or bibliography, and you do NOT need footnotes. 5 E. Suggestions for Essay Draft Topics For your one modern work, choose a modern narrative (book, movie, TV show, etc.) that you really like and would enjoy writing about. The modern work that you pick does not have to have mythic themes. It just has to have some similarities to an ancient myth. Some examples of possible topics: 1) A narrative featuring a friendship between two main characters (like I Love You, Man; Star Trek Into Darkness; Sherlock) compared to Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh or Buluqiya and Affan in the Tale of Buluqiya. 2) An epic fantasy or science fiction narrative (like The Hobbit, The Avengers, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter) compared to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Tale of Buluqiya, or the Baal Cycle. Note on #2: You can use the entire series of Lord of the Rings, of Harry Potter, or of the Rocky movies, for example. But you can’t mix and match books and movies; you can talk about the Lord of the Rings books or movies, but not both. You also must be specific about which book or movie you are talking about at any point in your essay. You must say “As it says in the Two Towers . . .” or “Aragorn says in the Return of the King . . .”.) 3) A trickster figure (Bart Simpson, Cartman, Voldemort) compared to Anansi, Raven, or Coyote. Note on #3: Again (see VIII. above), if you are using a TV series, you need to give the titles of the individual episodes you are discussing. 4) A powerful and possibly evil female character (Grendel’s mother from the movie [NOT the book] Beowulf or Ursula from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid) compared to Tiamat. 5) The Tale of Tulisa compared to the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. Note on #5: If you do compare the Tale of Tulisa with Beauty and the Beast, do NOT just look at similarities. These two stories are essentially the same story (or folktale tale type): the Tale of Tulisa is an example of ATU 425: The Search for the Lost Husband, while Beauty and the Beast is in a subcategory of the former, ATU 425C: Beauty and the Beast. Therefore, you will want to focus on differences, not similarities, between the Tale of Tulisa and Beauty and the Beast.