Was Queen Dido From The Aeneid By Virgil

Western Tradition I: A Reflection Having completed my second semester of Seminar, I have noticed some definite differences between the first course, Critical Strategies and Great Questions, and this one, Western Tradition I. The most notable difference is the material analyzed in the course. While Seminar One had a spread of works spanning centuries and including modern literature, Seminar Two narrowed its scope and focused on texts written prior to the sixteenth century. Seminar One had authors of varying ethnicities and cultural backgrounds while Seminar Two primarily featured white European authors, most of them men. Despite the differences in the content and origin of the texts, the same strategies can be employed to think critically about

Being able to communicate effectively is a key part of being successful in today’s work world. To ensure that Saint Mary’s students possess the ability to communicate effectively through both written and oral communication, the seminar program has decided to help students develop this skill by teaching them to analyze arguments so as to construct ones that are well supported, are well reasoned, and are controlled by a thesis or exploratory question. An example of when I worked to develop this ability was in writing my essay writing. In an essay, I analyzed Queen Dido from The Aeneid by Virgil, answering the question “Was Queen Dido a good leader?”. I argued what I believed to be the more difficult side, that she was in fact a good leader. This side was more difficult to argue because Dido ultimately killed herself, leaving her people behind, which many people saw as proof that she was a bad leader. In my essay I argued that she was a good leader because she lead her people overseas to a new land, started constructing a great city, and only fell in love with Aeneas and neglected her people because she was influenced to do so by the gods. I was able to construct these arguments by analyzing the opposing side and constructing mine to be well supported with appropriate use of textual evidence. In my self reflection essay from Seminar One, I discussed how seminar helped me learn to use

While critical thinking and written and oral communication can easily be applied to life outside of college, it is harder to see the use of shared inquiry. To me, shared inquiry is important in life beyond Saint Mary’s because it fosters an attitude of curiosity that leads to understanding and progress. One of the aspects of shared inquiry is being able to reevaluate initial hypotheses in light of evidence and collaborative discussion with the goal of making considered judgements. I used this skill during the class discussion of an excerpt from The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France. The text is a love story between the knight Guigemar and a woman simply referred to as “the lady” and its importance was not immediately apparent to me. My initial hypotheses was that it was included in the seminar reader simply to allow for the comparison of a love story from the late twelfth century to the love stories of today. After discussing the text in class, however, my eyes were opened to themes of ethics and feminism. Where before I saw a man and a woman engaged in a forbidden romance, I now saw the ethical question of cheating on a cruel spouse. Where before I saw a nameless woman hopelessly in love with a man, I now saw a woman asserting herself and doing what she could to control her fate in a life dominated by men. I was able to achieve this in part by applying the ability to pursue new and