General advice and research question help about Latin EE on Cicero

[dd4213]

Hi there,

I'm doing an EE in Latin B regarding Cicero's First Catilinarian, and I have undertaken some analysis of my own on the speech as well as reading academic articles written about it. However, I am still unsure of what my research question should be. I'd like to link the speech to the oratory goals that Cicero has listed in his works on oration, focusing on the trio "docet, delectat, movet" (teach, delight, move), but I am unsure of how to apply this to the speech. It is difficult to analyse the success of the speech as the circumstances around the time were rather murky and debated, so I was thinking of a question along the lines of "How does Cicero use his oratory goals to achieve his aims in the First Catilinarian?". I was wondering whether a question that begins with "how does" would be difficult to develop a reasoned argument for, and lead to a conclusion that's too broad or too factual. Does anyone have ideas on how to better phrase this question so it allows a reasoned argument and conclusion to be formed, or is my current one fine? Additionally, if anyone has written a classics EE about literature before, or just a classics EE, any help about the research process, planning, structuring, or writing would be appreciated. I am afraid that I will have insufficient research about the question as it will largely be my own analysis. Is this a big problem? Our school is not primarily an IB school so my supervisor has only supervised one EE before, and I was looking for some other opinions.Thank you!!