Blog Feedback

Over the weekend, I reviewed your three blogposts from the last week - Hercules/Cacus, Seven Hills of Rome, and Ovid/Tibullus. You'll receive individualized feedback from me, but here are some general comments:

1) Even in a blog post, you should be sure to include all necessary information, starting from a position of specificity. So, for example, your Ovid paragraph would have been well served to start with something like: "In Ovid's "Elegy for Tibullus," the Roman poet follows the third type of elegy, moving from grief to profound unhappiness." By starting off with a sentence like that, I immediately a) identify the author, b) identify the work, and c) identify my interpretation. Similarly, your hill paragraph should have begun with something like: "At the height of Rome, the Palatine Hill served as a base of power for several major emperors and also functioned as an important religious site." Again, this sentence fulfills several objectives: 1) it identifies the hill, 2) it identifies the era you're concerned with, and c) it highlights the two critical aspects of the hill during that period.

2) Please get the spelling of authors, characters, and historical figures right. I saw many different spellings of Tibullus and there's no excuse - you have it on the sheet right in front of you.

3) If you quote a work, the quote needs to be exact. People were sloppy in this regard. Also, if you are only citing one work of poetry within an essay, the only thing you need to include in parentheses at the quote's end is the line number. For example - Ovid offers some hope in his final stanza, when he notes that "Elysium's vale will be Tibullus's home" (60). Take note - only the number is included in parentheses, the end quote precedes the parentheses, and the punctuation comes after.

4) Also on the subject of quotes - if you use a quote, you MUST discuss the quote. You can't simply drop in a series of quotes and consider your job to be done. Keep these ground rules in mind - Never open a paragraph with a quote, never end a paragraph with a quote, and never have consecutive quotes.

5) On the Hercules/Cacus paragraph, check out Sarah's post for an excellent example of what I was looking for. Many people neglected the instructions, specifically - "I just want you to list unique details here." Sarah does that quite successfully. As for the second part of the prompt, Makhayla does a nice job of honing in on potential implications of Livy and Ovid's different stories.

6) I'm surprised that many of the Hill paragraphs still do not have a) citations (which were required in the assignment) or b) a sharper focus on their assigned era. Many people go well outside of their time period. Arron's is one of the stronger posts (I won't mention the one sentence where he goes outside of his assigned era).

7) People interpreted Ovid's elegy in a variety of ways; arguments for all three structures of elegy were expressed. The main problem I encountered here, though, was one that I warned specifically against - over and over again, people fail to refer to the last stanza. The exception to that, however, is the people arguing that this is an example of grief => consolation, for which that last stanza seems to be a strong example, as exemplified by Victoria.