CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Sappho Writing Prompt (10 Points)

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To reflect upon the course texts in preparation for thoughtful discussion
  2. To organize thoughts into a concise and cohesive response to a targeted question
  3. To consider multiple viewpoints about ideas

The Assignment

Please read the questions below and answer them in a letter addressed to the author, about as long as a 1-2 paragraph response. Write in your own voice, and quote the text at least once in support of what you say. Choose that quote carefully, because you want the passage whose particular words matter, not just one that happens to mention your subject. Submit your letter through Canvas before the start of class.

At this point in the semester I’m still asking only for a claim and a quote. That changes with the Islamic Mystic Poetry response, when every prompt starts asking you to take on a counterargument too. We will practice that move in class first, in the Counterargument and Concession workshop.

If the letter form does not suit what you want to say about Sappho, you may use any of the other four response genres instead (analytic, letter, dialogue, marginalia+aphorism, or the Four A’s). The claim-and-quote requirement stays the same either way.

Sappho is the first reading where students tend to get stuck, so please have a look at How to Read Hard Texts in CIE before you start.

Writing Prompt

  1. Reflect on the fragments and incomplete nature of Sappho’s work. How does this affect your interpretation of her poetry? In what other ways do we interpret or interpolate our understanding in light of incomplete information?

  2. Most of Sappho survives only as fragments quoted by others or recovered from torn papyrus, and yet her voice still reaches us. Choose a fifteen second fragment of a song or video that went viral out of context, and compare its survival to Sappho’s: what does the fragment preserve of the original, what does it destroy, and who controls what survives?

Submission

Please submit a word processed or PDF document.

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.