Week 7 Prompt: Prewriting and Argument Formation

Due: Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Explanation

This week, you will begin work in service of your midterm paper. Think of this work as a prewriting exercise that will help focus the scope of your project. For this assignment, you will answer a series of questions that will require you to narrow your attention on a single work, and on one or two passages within that work. These questions will also help you think about your own predispositions (what we may call a filter, screen, or lens) that incline you to read in a certain way.

For instance, Laura, in her presentation on Hamlet, focused her reading through the lens of performance and the difference between reality and representation. Phillip focused his reading through the lens of the gyre and the relation between unity and chaos. Susan, who talked about sonnets, focused her reading through the lens of gender difference; Lauren through the lens of the tragic hero; and Brittney through the lens of individual will versus preordained fate.

But, keep in mind that your lens is not synonymous with your close reading. They are two different operations. This week you will not be doing a close reading, but you will be preparing for it by identifying the text, the passage/s, your potential lens (you don’t have to be certain yet), and your potential argument (also, at this point, an uncertainty, but give it your best guess).

Method

Answer the following questions as an essay, organized into paragraphs as you see fit:

• What text do you pan to write about and why? What drew you to the text? Be specific in your explanation of why. I will assume that you find the text interesting or provocative, but go further, and tell me why it’s worth your attention. Talk about the features of the text you think are worth talking about, whether it be plot, character, the use of generic features, the formal qualities of the language, the strong visual imagery, the political and social content, etc. Each of you will have your own reasons, and these reasons could be anything, but they must be fully explained and clearly articulated. 
• What passage within the text are you going to focus on and why? What was it about the passage that drew your attention? Again, explain in detail using the technical language we’ve developed over the semester. If you need help explaining, use your Bedford glossary, or any of the other resources I’ve made available on the website. This is not a close reading, just a general discussion. No need to talk about specific rhetorical effects unless you want to. 
• What is your lens (see above) and how is it related to the passage/s you’ve chosen to focus on? This is really the second part of the question above, and you can answer them together. By answering this question in relation to which passage you’ve chosen, you will better understand the nature of your argument. 
• Finally, what is your (preliminary) argument about the text, based on the passage you’ve chosen? This is a tricky one and, at this point in the writing process, it puts the cart before the horse since you haven’t even done your close reading yet. However, it is an important step in conceptualizing the kind of argument you hope to make. Before we make our final arguments, we always create preliminary arguments that we know will evolve as our reading of the text becomes more advanced. 

Requirements

• Answer the above four questions as an essay organized into coherent paragraphs. The way you decide to organize your essay is up to you. 
• Your essay should be no less than 550 words. 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT 
• All assignments must be emailed to me by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not emailed to me by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit. 

Week 6 Prompt: Close Reading Hamlet or Glossary Work (Choose One)

Due: Wednesday, September 28, 2011

This week you must choose from ONE of two options:

• Option One: Choose a passage from Hamlet and perform a close reading. This is the same assignment you’ve been doing since the beginning of the semester. If you feel like you need practice close reading, you may want to choose this option. 
• Option Two: Use the Bedford Glossary to answer a series of questions having to do with drama and plays. This option is intended to help you focus on the generic distinctions and nuances of drama. If you feel comfortable with your close reading skills, you may want to choose this option. 

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OPTION ONE

Explanation

Close reading involves reading carefully and keeping your senses attuned to things within the text that strike you as interesting, disturbing, significant, etc. Be certain to mark the passage or passages that strike you, so that you can come back to them. Once finished, reread the striking parts, choose one that you find the most compelling, and describe how it works and what it means.

Remember, you do this by:

• identifying what rhetorical effect/s are at work within the particular passage; 
• explaining the way the rhetorical effect/s function in the context of the passage; 
• and, finally, suggesting why the meaning, derived from the effect, is important for understanding the entire work. 

Close reading always moves from the particular (passage/effect) to the universal (entire text). From the effect you will provide a new way of reading the entire work. In many ways, this new reading forms the basis of your argument.

Requirements

• Read Hamlet and perform a close reading 
• Focus on a single passage that you feel is important 
• Identify and interpret no more than two rhetorical effects at work within the passage 
• Write your argument in 450 to 650 words 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT 
• All assignments must be emailed to me by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not emailed to me by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit. 

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OPTION TWO

In essay form (that is, with complete sentences and coherent, well-organized paragraph), please answer the following questions using your Bedford Glossary for assistance:

• What is the difference between story and plot? 
• What is the difference between drama and play? 
• How does an Elizabethan tragedy, like Hamlet, differ from an ancient tragedy, like Oedipus Rex? 
• What is a soliloquy and why is it important to understanding Hamlet? 
• There are a number of soliloquy’s in Hamlet. In your opinion, which is the most important and why? 

Requirements

• Read Hamlet and then begin answering the above questions 
• Use your Bedford Glossary or the Oxford online resources to assist you in developing complete answers 
• Write your answers in essay form, NOT as a list. Be sure that your essay is a coherent, well-organized response. In style, it should resemble a summary. 
• Writer your answers in 450 to 650 words 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT 
• All assignments must be emailed to me by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not emailed to me by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit. 

Week 5 Prompt: Close Reading Plays

Due: Wednesday, September 21, by 6 pm

Explanation

This week, we begin our unit on plays. So far, our close reading exercises have attended to shorter works (or short sections of longer works), but now we will have to use our powers of explication to explore longer, more sustained texts. This at first may seem daunting, but be assured, the method is no different.

As we reviewed in class this past Thursday, close reading involves reading carefully and keeping your senses attuned to things within the text that strike you as interesting, disturbing, significant, etc. Be certain to mark the passage or passages that strike you, so that you can come back to them. Once finished, reread the striking parts, choose one that you find the most compelling, and describe how it works and what it means.

Remember, you do this by:

• identifying what rhetorical effect/s are at work within the particular passage; 
• explaining the way the rhetorical effect/s function in the context of the passage; 
• and, finally, suggesting why the meaning, derived from the effect, is important for understanding the entire work. 

Close reading always moves from the particular (passage/effect) to the universal (entire text). From the effect you will provide a new way of reading the entire work. In many ways, this new reading forms the basis of your argument.

Details

• Read both plays for this week (Oedipus Rex and Lysistrata) 
• Perform a close reading and interpretation on one and only one play 
• Focus on only a single passage 
• Identify and interpret no more than two important rhetorical effects at work within the passage. 
• Write your argument in 450 to 650 words. 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT. 
• All assignments must be EMAILED TO ME by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not EMAILED TO ME by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit.

Prompt, Week 4: Close Reading Poetry

DUE: Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Explanation

Last week we began looking at poetry in a new way. Rather than reading a poem and trying to say something general about it, we began with the poem itself, looked at its rhetorical effects, and then derived meaning from those effects. This process results in careful reading and true interpretation. In fact, it can be considered a kind of invention. From the language of the poem we invent meaning.

For this week, you will be required to perform this kind of close reading on a poem of your choice. Just as we did in class last week with Wordsworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” you will begin by identifying and examining particular rhetorical effects. Remember, this process is akin to observing and describing the parts of an image. During this initial phase you don’t yet make any judgments or create meaning; instead, you catalogue what’s there. Some of these things will be important, some will not, but try to see everything you can.

In the second phase, you will select the most important rhetorical effect and begin to interpret its meaning. In “A Slumber,” we identified two significant rhetorical effects, parallelism and ambiguous pronoun use, and we then did interpretive work on both effects, deriving meaning from each. In interpreting your poem, you will do the same work. After selecting the most important rhetorical effects for interpretation, you will argue for a particular understanding based on those effects. For example, in class we noticed the ambiguous use of the pronoun “she,” and from that effect, we came up with different ways of interpreting it. For your reading you will do the same, but you will argue for only one meaning, the meaning you feel is best.

Method

First, Observe

• Carefully read your target text 
• Identify all rhetorical effects that you can. Use your Bedford Glossary or the Figures of Speech posted on the blog site. Do not limit yourself to the master tropes, but look at all figures of speech and versification. 
• Ask questions about what things mean, either effects or particular words (when we identified parallelism, we then began to ask what things were parallel and why did it matter). 
• Narrow down those rhetorical effects you believe are the most significant 

Then, Interpret

• Think about how your chosen rhetorical effects influence the meaning of the entire poem 
• Form an argument for reading the poem based on your interpretation of the effects. 
• Writer your interpretation in a valid argumentative form: begin by asserting your argument, follow by close reading the rhetorical effect/s that support your argument, describing how the effect operates in the poem, and finally interpret the meaning of those effects. 

If you get stuck, think about the work we did in class last week. We effectively performed this exact process, we just didn’t write it down in argumentative form.

Logistics

• Read the poems assigned for week 4 and choose one. 
• Perform a close reading and interpretation on one and only one poem, focusing on only a single, important rhetorical effect. 
• Write your argument in 350 to 550 words. 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT. 
• All assignments must be EMAILED TO ME by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not EMAILED TO ME by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit. 

NOTE: You will no longer post assignments to the blog. Instead, all assignments will be emailed to me, and I will publish a small selection of them to the blog on a weekly basis.

Prompt, Week 3: Close Reading Assignment

DUE: Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Explanation

So far, we have talked a great deal about close reading, and we’ve even done a little as a group (think the political comic we looked at on the second day). Now, each of you will undertake a close reading of your own. As I mentioned in the syllabus, close reading (also referred to narrowly as explication) is the practice of reading, analyzing, and interpreting a single passage within a larger text. Traditionally, this kind of reading was limited to identifying significant rhetorical figures, like the master tropes discussed by Culler (70–72; metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony).

However, times have changed. Close reading is still at the heart of literary studies, but it has expanded to include a wider range of critical approaches. For instance, we can close read passages in The Odyssey using performance or identity in order to make an argument about how to read a text.

Which brings me to the next, crucial element of close reading. When you close read a passage, your interpretation is not limited to that passage. Instead, the close reading of three or four lines (or maybe a paragraph or two) enables you to make an argument about how the entire text can be read. In fact, close reading is a kind of evidence. It acts as the critical support for your primary argument.

And, indeed, everything you write should have an explicit or implied argument. This may at first seem counterintuitive because close reading is more like observation or description than argument, but close readings always contain an argument for how we, other readers of the text, should understand it.

Method

Conceptually, this is all well and good. But how do you, as novice close readers, perform your close readings? Here are my suggestions:

First, Read

• Carefully read your target text
• Identify a passage that strikes you as interesting
• Consider how you want to read the passage (performance, identity, rhetorical analysis, or some combination, etc. Do not feel limited by these categories)
• Begin interpreting the passage using your chosen approach
• Think about how your interpretation argues for a certain way of reading the entire text

Then, Write

• Consider using the form Assertion, Citation, Explanation, or ACE.
• Write your assertion, which is your primary argument about the text
• Follow the assertion with your citation, or passage. This is where you do your close reading. You will cite the passage, in part or in full, and then you will describe how to read it. The best kind of citations are integrated with your own words (do not just quote an entire passage; instead, cite those parts that are most important to your reading). Avoid block quotes.
• Finally, explain why your close reading is important for a better understanding of the text as a whole.

ACE may at first seem formulaic, but when starting out it can be helpful to have a formula to work with. In terms of writing, this organization pattern is widely accepted across a range of disciplines, so it may be good practice to try and follow it.

Logistics

• Read one of the assigned target texts, which include chapters from The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Beowulf, The Inferno, and Paradise Lost.
• Publish your close reading as a blog post
• Title your post with the week and your name (for ex., mine would be: Week 3: James Trout)
• Your reading should be at least 350 words long and no more than 550 words
• All posts must be published by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not published by Friday, 12 pm, it will receive no credit.

Please check your posts for my comments. I will often critique your posts in the comment section. If your post does not meet my standard for full credit, I will give you suggestions for improvement and ask you to edit your original post. If you choose not to edit the post, you will receive half credit.