Writing
If you explore the study materials section, you will find some advice about techniques of analyzing texts, formulating analytic “theses,” and composing analytical journals. That word analytical is crucial. Your impressions are always relevant, but never central. We are concerned with the ways in which the texts we read grapple with fundamental human issues - not to what degree they measure up to your personal standards of taste.
At regular intervals, you will be expected to post on the class mailing list a short (two pages, or 400-500 word) analytic journal, which articulates an issue raised by a particular text and points out some of the ways in which the text confronts that issue. In other words, I will expect you to articulate a thesis about the text and then to demonstrate some of the most significant ways in which the text approaches that issue. The journals will be “guided,” in that I will establish certain issues or aspects of the texts you write about I want you to focus on. Otherwise, you have a large degree of free choice. Please do not write about a text set as the primary discussion point of a particular session (unless you tackle a text from a date well beyond the date when you submit your journal).
The use of the class mailing list is an effort to generate a discussion chain outside our class meetings. You should always feel free to address issues/questions raised in class, or to respond (politely) to your classmates.
Story-tellers often make use of formulas – recognizable patterns of plot. The new story need not always follow the “rules” in a simplistic fashion – the storyteller can also subtly diverge from the paradigm.
Journal “guidance”: (you may undertake these projects in whatever order you wish)
- As a way of exploring this aspect of stories, I offer you this challenge. One member of the class should post on the class mailing list the first few paragraphs of a story of the sort we will read during the term – a love story, a detective story, or a ghost story. Then the rest of us will join in. If we end up devising a variety of stories, that’s no problem – the aim is to develop our understanding of story-paradigms, not to get published in the New Yorker or obtain a movie deal.
- Ah, where to begin? Having articulated the thesis raised by the story you select, consider in detail the first paragraph of the tale. What words, visual images, and syntactic structures present that issue most clearly. Keep in mind that shorter fiction must “hit the ground running” and teach its reader promptly what to be alert for.
- Is this where it all ends? This is parallel to item 2, but now your attention should focus on the last paragraph of the story. Narratives, unlike, say, sermons, are not obligated to offer packages of wisdom (and a writer like Hawthorne, who often seems to do so, has a habit of undercutting the stated “moral” of his stories). Stories may be intended to generate questions. In any case, what sort of “closure” of the fundamental issues of the story does the final paragraph offer?
- The turning point: We’ve looked at the start and the finale - now define the climactic point in the narrative, and demonstrate how that moment brings fundamental issues to the surface. Be very careful, here, not to let yourself succumb to the demon Summary. Your work is to consider the connotations and implications of the words and images the writer uses, not to translate the tale into your own language.
Final Presentations
Basically, I will expect you to offer a five-minute oral presentation to the class, offering a thesis about one of the collections we only sampled. What are the stories as a group “about?” And how/where is this issue presented and developed?
