Block, 8/22 - Intro to Epic, Prep for ICE

*P&P

*Review J4 - Intro to Ancient Epic

*Begin putting together your outline for an ICE (In Class Essay). See the prompt below. You may bring your outline with you to class during which you will flesh out your argument. Enjoy!

HW: 

• Be ready for a short quiz-test on Tuesday over the Introductory chapters of Leithart's Heroes of the City of Man.  
• Using Leithart's text as inspiration, write an ICE (in personal letter form) that answers the following prompt: 

It's your freshman year. You've been at Yale a mere five days now. Things are going swimmingly! It's your first day of Western Civ (short for Western Civilization), and Dr. Casaubon strides impressively, nay, massively, back and forth on the lecture hall floor and says with his British accent (which magically lends him credence), "All resurrection stories are merely myth, dressed up language signifying the cyclic nature of the seasons. The resurrection myths of both Osiris and Jesus merely tell the tale of winter death and spring resurrection, both deities testifying to man’s need for storied explanation of natural harvest cycles. Both are mere vegetation deities, not realities. All myths, Christian and pagan, derive their similarities from what Carl Jung called 'the collective unconscious.' The flood stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Gilgamesh Epic, and the Bible communicate nothing about an actual ancient flood; rather, they are stories to explain man's disgust with his own violent nature and his desire to begin life anew from the inside out." You immediately think back to Mr. Reno's Classical Lit course at . . . where was it? But of course! Monte Vista CHRISTIAN School. You ransack your brain for what you remember from the introduction of Dr. Leithart's Heroes of the City of Man. Yes, good stuff that. You determine then and there to write Dr. Causabon an ICE (five paragraphs) that makes bare his presuppositions and demolishes the conclusions he has drawn from them . . . all to help you develop your own apologetic and to do your Christian duty of voicing the gospel to this walking (and withering) brain-man. Here you remind yourself to address this "foe" with the respect of an older man. You graciously begin . . .

Dear Dr. Casaubon . . .

(Here is your graciously and insightfully reasoned apologetic)

Respectfully yours,

YOUR NAME HERE