CLA/WLIT 196
Ancient Lyric Poetry

Midterm: Ancient Near Eastern Poetry

The midterm will be in two parts:

1. I will give you a series of excerpts and ask you to identify the poetic devices, techniques or tropes discussed here. In most cases this will be passive identification, except for:

parallelism: I will ask you to analyze the scheme (e.g. abc:abd, etc.)

metaphor: I will ask you to identify and describe tenor, vehicle and ground

2. Essay. This is to be written in class, but you can prepare this ahead, and even bring notes (you will have to turn in part one before you can take out your notes).
By now we've read a fairly large amount of ANE poetry, and have a broad if admittedly superficial exposure to cultures, periods and contexts. Some of you may feel, "what the heck do I know about ancient Near Eastern poetry?" A lot more than any other UVM student. I want to see if any big pictures have been percolating in your head, and give you a creative outlet for a change. Also, if plan it right, what you do on this can lay the groundwork, or part of it, your final project.
 
The following four topics are themes that I have stressed in class. They would give an opportunity to draw comparisons and contrasts across the range of what we've done.

A. Issues of author, audience and performance.

B. Poetics of ritual, ritual poetics.

C. Speech-act.

D. Quellenforschung ("Search for Sources")

If none of these appeals, then please choose one poem, or section of a poem, and write about its imagery, themes, and/or use of language. Preparing for part one of this test (poetic techniques and device) will prepare you well for this essay. You just need to sit down with your poem or section and read very closely to tease out all possible meaning, going over it several times, tracking images, and so on. In your essay you must be specific, citing actual passages and words. How does the poet manipulate language, how does he/she develop motifs and ideas? How does the use of metaphor introduce "emergent meanings"? Or does the use of metaphor transcend the modern formulation (tenor, vehicle, ground) in any noteworthy way? Can any of this be drawn together to yield a new unitary reading of the whole poem? If your final project is going to be some sort of commentary or study of a specific passage, this essay will also let you get some ground work covered.