Critical Essay Summary/Response

Your final assignment for the term will be to choose one of the following critical essays, read it, write a summary, and respond to the argument made in the essay.

CHOOSE AN ESSAY:  Following are six critical essays about six of the texts we have read this term.  Choose one to read carefully.  Take notes

"Bradstreet's The Author to Her Book" 
by Lisa Day-Lindsey
"Frederick Douglass' Narrative and the Subtext of Folklore"
by Kelly Rothenberg
"Mary White Rowlandson Remembers Captivity: A Mother's Anguish, a Woman's Voice"
by Parley Ann
"The "Bedeviling of Young Goodman Brown"
by Thomas F., BoswellWalsh Jr.
"`Now, gods, stand up for bastards': Reinterpreting Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography"
by William H. Shurr
"'The Cask of Amontillado' A Case for the Defense"
by Patrick White

SUMMARIZE:  Fully summarize the argument made by the critic.  When necessary for explanatory purposes, convey also the details/evidence used to support that argument.  This should take you a page and a half to two pages. 

EVALUATE:  Evaluate the essay based on the elements of 1) the credentials of the author; 2) the medium of publication; 3) the respectability of the publisher; 4) the currency of the source.  You will find further explanations of these criteria in Writing about Literature, page 114-115.  You may find that you have to do a little research to be able to complete this part of the assignment.  You can start by googling the author and/or the publication in which the essay has been published.  This should take you a well-developed paragraph.

RESPOND:  Do you agree or disagree with the writer?  Is there anything that you are confused about?  Is there something that you respond negatively to in terms of the presentation of the argument?  Is writer suggesting a different way of looking at the text than the way that we discussed it in class?  How does the writer's interpretation of the text compare to the class interpretation or your personal interpretation?  This should take you anywhere from 3-5 paragraphs. 

CONCLUDE:  Leave your reader with some kind of final statement.  Overall how useful did you find this critical essay?  Did it change or enhance your understanding of the text it was discussing?  Did you learn something from reading it?  Did you ultimately not find it helpful?  Why or why not?  Go beyond just summarizing what you have said previously in the paper--instead, try to synthesize the experience of reading this critical essay.

Of course, essays should be formatted as requested in the syllabus and you should cite, correctly in MLA format, any sources that you use (including your critical essay and the original text, if you refer to it).

**There will be copies of the articles in folders next to my door for BORROWING (not enough for each of you to take them away for good) tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

**Be sure to email me any questions or have them ready for me in class.

DUE:  Thursday, December 15th by noon.

Reading Response Due Tuesday, November 29th

This assignment is in lieu of a second explication paper.

Please choose one of the short stories we have read by Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, or Poe.  Write a reader response/reaction paper of about 3 pages.  For the sake of this assignment, you may assume that your reader knows the work you are writing about, so there is no need to summarize it at length.

Instead, you will examine your personal reaction to the text and then explain and defend that reaction.  While there is no "right response" or "wrong response" to a piece of fiction (at least not for the sake of this assignment!), there may be "weak responses" (ones that do not demonstrate a deep understanding of the text or are not well supported with evidence from the text) or "strong responses" (ones that show thoughtfulness about the text and use evidence from the text to support claims made).

Please write a thoughtful, organized, and well-supported (using direct evidence from the text) answer to the following three questions:

1.  What about this story stands out in your mind or strikes you either emotionally or intellectually?
2.  What in your background, values, needs, and interests contributes to your reaction?
3.  What specific passages in the work trigger that reaction?
4.  (Optional)  You may also want to consider whether this reaction is one that the author might have anticipated, or if it is one that his readers might have shared with you.

Your essay must:

• Mention the title of the text and the author and provide a short (1-2 sentence) summary of what the text is about, in the introduction.
• Include a thesis statement that makes an argument that encompasses all the claims you make in the paper (in other words, the paper cannot be a laundry list of your reactions to the text--your claims about the text and your reaction need to be connected through a central thesis).
• Document your source with in text citations and a works cited page, as needed.
• Be well written and proofread.  Use Standard English.  Write in complete sentences.
• Follow the guidelines as listed in the syllabus--EXACTLY.  

If you have any questions, please email me over the weekend.  I would also be VERY HAPPY to look at rough drafts, if you send them no later than Sunday evening.  You might also look at this webpage, which has a great process for brainstorming ideas for a reaction paper. 

Please remember that this will be your only, graded draft of this paper.  Good luck.  I look forward to hearing what you come up with.

Explicatons

I am really looking forward to beginning to hear some of your voices in these papers!  Whoo hoo!
Your first explication paper will be due on Tuesday, October 11. You may write on any of the Native American myths or on any of the discoverer pieces.  This will be a first draft--do your best, but know that you will get feedback before it is graded.  Bring two copies with you to class on Tuesday.
An explication paper is a very short (2-3 page) attempt to close read a passage from a larger work and to use that passage to make a small and focused argument about the meaning of that text as a whole. You will want to:

1. Choose a few key paragraphs (or lines, or pieces of dialogue) of one of the works above on which to focus your analysis.

2. Examine the selection for interesting patterns or features. You may look for metaphors, similes, comparisons, word choice, tone, and organization.

3. Use the patterns or features to draw conclusions about the author’s style or rhetoric; the text’s relationship to a specific period in history or type of culture; or the meaning of a repeated theme, symbol or motif.  (Consider that the Native American myth comes from a predominately oral culture/tradition.  Consider the audience to whom the discoverers are writing, and the purpose for the writing.)

In order to closely read a text (and to prepare yourself to write a paper like this) you may want to ask yourself the following questions. You will probably NOT write a paper entirely based on your answers to any one or several of these questions, but answering them will probably lead you to an interesting topic for your explication.

What is the work about?

What is the purpose of the work? (To inform? To entertain? To persuade?)

Is the writing formal? Informal?

What is the overall vocabulary used? (A lot of long, polysyllabic words? Short, simple words?)

What types of words are used? Do the words follow a pattern?

What types of sounds are used? Are words or sounds repeated?

What do the sentences look like? Are any rules of grammar broken?

What works for you as a reader? Are there any phrases that stick out as being memorable? Why? What do you like? What don’t you like?



Please keep in mind the following:

1. Papers need to be formatted as requested in the syllabus. See my notes on your first explication papers, the syllabus formatting guidelines, and the sample MLA-style papers in Rules for Writers or Writing about Literature. There is no excuse for ANY explication NOT being formatted perfectly.

2. Please punctuate your titles correctly. Book, magazine, television show, album, film titles should be italicized. Poem, short story, episode, song, painting titles should be place in quotation marks.

3. Do not forget that you need to provide in-text citations (page numbers or line numbers for poetry) for any direct quotations you use in a paper.

4. Write about literature in the continuous present tense, and watch that you do not slip back and forth between past and present tense when it is not appropriate.

5. Format all long quotations (4 or more lines) as block quotes. Do not end paragraphs with quotations (you should ALWAYS comment on quotations before you move on). Quotations should not do work for you—you are interpreting the literature. Use quotations as evidence for your interpretation.

6. Try to write as if you are NOT answering a prompt for a school assignment. Eliminate phrases like “I chose to write about _________” or “like we discussed in class.” These phrases keep you from producing sophisticated prose.

7. Beware of totalizing generalizations like “everyone knows” or “it is human nature” or calling something “OUR culture.” These phrases are overly general and assumptive. Not to mention intellectually lazy.

8. If you use an evaluative phrase, be sure to define or back up that evaluation. For example, if you note that a particular phrase in the text you are discussing is “interesting,” explain what is interesting about it. Or WHY you think it is interesting. Your reader can’t read your mind!

You may be tempted to Google the term "explication paper" to look for advice on how to write them. I suggest you don't do that. There is a lot of information out there that isn't very good. If you are looking for some good advice, I suggest you check out this handout from the Harvard Arts faculty. There are some good ideas there, and they are looking for the same sort of thing that I am.  I also suggest using the description and model in the Gardner book to help guide you.

I am going to be around this weekend, so don't hesitate to email if you have questions, frustrations, or if you want me to look at something.  I have a friend in from out of town, so I might be checking email a little less frequently than usual--but I WILL be checking and getting back to people.
Good luck.