M. Householder
Fall 2005
Essay Assignment #1: Understanding and Applying Secondary Sources
Background: Academic writing about literature is informed by the conversations that have preceded it. A reader might respond to an interpretation made by another reader in order to reject or refine it. Or, a reader might borrow a method or theoretical orientation used for another work and then apply it to the text at hand. This first assignment is not a typical essay question. Rather, it is an exercise designed to introduce you to reading secondary critical analyses of literary texts and to the challenges academic writers encounter when applying such secondary criticism to one’s own reading of a text. Part of the challenge of writing a literary research paper is understanding precisely how one’s interpretation fits in with the critical conversation that preceded it. The best critical essays figure out how to add something new to that conversation, rather than merely re-hashing the work that someone else has done.
For this assignment, you will analyze a critical conversation, assess the strengths and weaknesses of the positions taken by participants in that conversation, and finally, based on those assessments, adapt some aspect of what you have learned from that conversation to do your own independent analysis.
For your future assignments you will have the freedom to choose which works of secondary criticism you want to use. For this exercise, however, I have chosen for you. You have read and discussed three articles, two by Myra Jehlen and one by Peter Hulme. Together, their exchange constitutes a critical controversy: a debate about which interpretation, method, and/or theory (in this case, all three) should be used to read a given text or texts (in this case, colonial texts).
When you begin your research papers later this semester, you will seek to identify similar kinds of critical controversies. They will not always be as conveniently identifiable as this one. Often, a critical controversy is spread out across different journals and/or books, and across many years. Sometimes a critical controversy is only implied: the way one critic reads a short story by Melville, for example, contradicts the method a second critic uses to analyze a poem by Whitman. No controversy is apparent on the surface of these two critical procedures; they reveal themselves only after an enterprising reader (such as yourself) puts them into conversation with one another and exposes an underlying difference.
Assignment: Write a four-page paper in which you do two things: 1) summarize and explain the controversy between Jehlen and Hulme and 2) evaluate the persuasiveness of each argument, supporting your assessment through an analysis of George Best’s True Discourse (you may substitute a different text from the course, but only in consultation with me).
Tackle these two tasks in sections of roughly equal length. Part 1 should do the following:
Part 2 will do at least one, and probably some combination of more than one, of the following:
With only two pages for each section, it will be vital to stay focused on your task. I strongly suggest that in the second half of the essay you focus on one passage (at the most two passages) from Best’s narrative.
In addition, because of its split structure, your essay is likely to have two thesis statements (one to explain the controversy, the other to demonstrate which position your prefer). Obviously, these two thesis statements should work together logically.
Your paper should have an identifiable thesis, a coherent argument logically organized into paragraphs, supporting evidence in the form of logically and grammatically integrated (as well as properly cited) quotations, all written and formatted according to the conventions of standard written English and MLA style guidelines. Your paper should by typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins in a font similar to this one.
Please bring FOUR COPIES of your COMPLETE working draft to class
Thursday 9/29.
Final drafts are due at the beginning of class Thursday 10/6.