English 3563
Assignment One
Analysis of a Brief Early American Passage
| Due Dates: | Requirements: |
| Working Draft—September 28th, 2015 Final Draft—October 5th, 2015 |
|
Objective
To construct a persuasive argument about the meaning of a brief passage from a selected work of literature. The argument should be based on a close reading of the text in question. Close reading is a skill that will help you in subsequent assignments for this class.
Passage Choices
| Sir, As I know that you will be pleased at the great victory with which Our Lord has crowned my voyage, I write this to you, from which you will learn how in thirty-three days, I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which the most illustrious king and queen our sovereigns gave to me. And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. (Christopher Columbus, "from 'Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage,'" Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A., 35) |
What could now sustain them but the spirit of Goad and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity." (William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation, Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A., 434) |
| This sentiment roused our countrymen's jealousy. Alcaraz bade his interpreter tell the Indians that we were members of his race who had been long lost; that his group were lords of the land who must be obeyed and served, while we were inconsequential. The Indians paid no attention to this. Conferring among themselves, they replied that the Christians lied: We had come from the sunrise, they from the sunset; we healed the sick, they killed the sound; we came naked and barefoot, they clothed, horsed, and lanced; we coveted nothing but gave whatever we were given, while they robbed whomever they found and bestowed nothing on anyone. (Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, "from The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca," Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A., 50) | The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbor, he rather hates them, because he dreads the competition. In a little time their success in the woods makes them neglect their tillage. They trust to the natural fecundity of the earth, and therefore do little; carelessness in fencing often exposes what little they sow to destruction; they are not at home to watch; in order there to make up the deficiency, they go oftener to the woods. That new mode of life brings along with it a new set of manners, which I cannot easily describe. These new manners being grafted on the old stock, produces a strange sort of lawless profligacy, the impressions of which are indelible. (J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, from Letters from an American Farmer, Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A., 612) |
Procedure
Choose one of the above passages.
Take notes including specific details in the passage that explain its meaning and significance. Such details include word choice, comparison/contrast, imagery, punctuation, and anything else the author has used in order to make his or her meaning clear to an audience. (It may not be possible to find an example of each of these elements.) Focus on those that are the most useful in explaining the meaning of the passage.
Formulate a thesis statement summing up the meaning and importance of the chosen passage. This thesis will undoubtedly change as you write your paper, but at least it will give you a starting point. A good thesis is arguable rather than obvious.
Write a draft of your argument about the passage in question. Refer to specific words and phrases in the selected passage in order to support the points in your argument. You may also refer to other quotations in the larger work, as long as you maintain your focus on the passage in question.
Bring a word-processed, correctly formatted draft of this paper to class on September 28th, 2015 for peer editing. Include the entire chosen quotation at the top of the first page.
After considering feedback you received from peer editors and reconsidering your own argument, revise your paper.
Proofread your draft to identify and correct spelling and grammatical errors.
Turn in the completed final draft along with a peer-edited working draft in class on October 5th, 2015.
Close Reading
Close reading means paying careful attention to details in a written work. Since you will be looking more closely at this passage than most people who read it, your paper can offer perspectives on its meaning that will engage your audience challenging its expectations. In analyzing a brief passage, you might ask yourself the following questions:
What, literally, takes place in the passage?
Where in the larger work does the passage occur?
Who speaks in this passage? To whom?vHow is this passage different from any other passage in the text?
Does the author use any terms that will be unfamiliar to 21st-century readers? What do these terms mean? How have these terms changed since the author first wrote the passage? NOTE: These passages are from a time before the regularization of many spelling rules. Thus, the writer's spelling of a particular word probably tells us very little about his or her intentions.
Does the author use any imagery in making his or her point? The most common forms of imagery include metaphor, simile, personification and symbol. Not all passages will contain straightforward examples of imagery, however.
Does the author allude to any other works of literature? The Bible is one common source of allusions in early American literature and it is often worthwhile to consult a Bible for the original verse or verses.
What will make this paper interesting to an audience consisting of your classmates, your teacher and yourself? You will want to tell them something new—that would not otherwise have occurred to them after reading this passage.
Remember: A close reading of a passage is not the same thing as a summary of the passage. A close reading provides much more insight into what the passage means and gets beyond the obvious interpretations of it. Resist the temptation to let the structure of the chosen passage determine the organization of your analysis of it.
Writing Tips
I have based the following writing tips on common difficulties that students encounter when writing papers for this class.
Develop an arguable and interesting thesis statement that applies directly to the passage (i. e., that you could not write about any other poem).
Example (for a paper based on the following passage):
My thoughts do yield me more content
Than can thy hours in pleasure spent.
Nor are they shadows, which I catch,
Nor fancies vain at which I snatch,
But reach at things that are so high
Beyond thy dull capacity:
Eternal substance I do see,
With which enrichéd I would be. (Anne Bradstreet, "Flesh and the Spirit," Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, p. 224)NOT AN ARGUABLE THESIS: In the above lines, Anne Bradstreet argues against material pleasures.
ARGUABLE THESIS: While "Flesh and the Spirit" appears to make its case by opposing the physical to the spiritual world, these lines describe an experience that blends aspects of both extremes and demonstrates that physical and spiritual worlds cannot maintain the strict separation to which the poem aspires.
Organize your argument around this thesis statement. Think of between two and four sub-points and structure your argument around them.
Sample Outline (for the above thesis):
From the title to the names of the poem's characters, "Flesh and Spririt" conveys a stark opposition between spiritual and physical worlds.
When Bradstreet explains her spiritual orientation, she must give the spiritual world the qualities of "eternal substance" while diminishing shadows and "fancies vain."
As this passage demonstrates, "Flesh and the Spirit" starts as argument against physical pleasure but becomes a meditation on the difficulty of conveying spiritual truths in a flawed language attached to physical realities.
MLA format means you should include a list of works cited at the end of your paper, even if it only includes one work. For example:
Bradstreet, Anne. "Flesh and the Spirit." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume A. Eighth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2012. 223-225. Print.
Please note differences between this bibliographic format and the parenthetical citation format of the above passage selections on page 1. They are not the same.
Some grammatical tips:
Avoid using the passive voice whenever it is possible to do so. When writing in the passive voice, you remove the subject from the sentence or at least de-emphasize it. This makes writing less engaging to most readers.
Example:
ACTIVE VOICE: William Bradford despises Thomas Morton.
(Note structure: subject/verb/object)PASSIVE VOICE: Thomas Morton is despised.
(Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)ACTIVE VOICE: William Bradford despised Thomas Morton.
PASSIVE VOICE: Thomas Morton was despised.
(Passive voice can exist in any verb tense.)
Avoid contractions when writing college papers. Replace they're with they are and replace don't with do not (these are just a few examples of the numerous possible contractions out there.
Italicization is the best way to signal that you are referring to a word itself and not to the thing that the word represents. Notice how I am using italicization of the terms in the following section "d". You should also italicize titles of books (even in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like Bildungsroman or sine qua non.
The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive of it. Its and whose both deviate from the above rule about possessives.
2 September 2015