Attendance and Participation (10 %)
This is a discussion course where your attendance and participation in class are vital to your success and that of the group. Bring your text to class and be prepared to read aloud, debate vigorously, listen, and enjoy. If you must miss class, please notify me beforehand of the fact by phone, email, or in person; you are responsible for the information you missed. Any absence deducts a percentage point from your final grade: two latenesses count as one absence. Repeated absences will lead to a formal warning and can affect your grade and status in the class. If you have a conflict, like a recitation, lab, sports commitment, or job that meets during this class, you should not take the course.
Written Work (90%)
Journals (15%): Each student will keep a writing journal (handwritten or typed) and must complete a minumum number of entries: one per week before the unit on Billy Budd (for a total of 10) and then each Billy Budd assignment (another 10). There will also be opportunities in class for free writing and brainstorming. Bring journals to class every day, and be prepared to submit or exchange them at any time. They should also be submitted with each essay. Journals will receive credit but no grade until the end of the course.
Essays and Revision (75%, or 15% each): Each essay will be written in stages, with a first draft (ungraded) and a graded final essay, except for the Billy Budd assignment, for which there will be a graded essay and also a graded revision. Essays and revisions are due at the beginning of class on the day assigned. In a course that depends so much on timing (i.e. getting the papers in, getting back comments in time to revise before the next essay is due), it is better to hand in something less than perfect than to delay. All final essays and the final revision should include a brief statement summarizing the process of revision.
Essays must be typed or word-processed, double-spaced, and adequately margined, should include a title, and need to observe the conventions of grammar and spelling. Use the Diana Hacker A Pocket Manual for all drafts and revisions.
Use of old course essays or notes, Cliff's Notes, essays posted on websites, or other sources without correct attribution constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism—the use of words, ideas, or efforts of others without acknowledgment—is a serious academic offense and will be brought to the attention of the Committee on Discipline. In this course you will practice research skills and learn responsible uses of information. The essays, however, are critical readings of literary texts, representing your own thinking and developing your own arguments.
Workshops, Tutorials, Conferences
On days when papers fall due, we will hold writing workshops, where students will photocopy and distribute essays for peer review. Each student will be scheduled at least once during the term to present his or her work in workshop and lead the discussion of his or her essay.
Students meet weekly with the course tutor to go over drafts and revisions. These meetings are required, and attendance will be taken. Meetings will take place at the same time each week. Come to meetings prepared with notes, outlines, or drafts to discuss.
Each student will also hold two conferences with the instructor at scheduled times.
Phase One
Achieving a grade of "B" or better in this class allows students to pass the Phase One Writing Reqirement.
ESSAY TOPICS
For each essay, I will suggest topics for writing. You are always free, however, to choose a topic of your own, so long as it meets the objectives of the assignment. You may speak with me or the course tutor about topics at any time.
First Draft 1 (3-5 pages—due 9/21 ) Close Reading
We have been studying the process poets undergo to produce their works. Using your journal entries as a resource, choose a word or short phrase from one of the poems you read and explain why or for what effect the poet chose it (if you have manuscript evidence of a revision, explain the poet's choice). Make use of what you find out about the word's history in the OED. Think about where the word or phrase appears in the poem. And ask yourself, how does this bit of the poem contribute to its overall meaning or show what the author was trying to do? Use quotations from throughout the poem as needed.
Essay 1 (5 pages—due 9/28)
For this, as for any final draft, you will be attending to the problems of the first draft: ideas and argument, organization, and style and mechanics. But you should also consider ways of developing your idea to take in other parts of the poem, ideas you had not considered earlier, or other poems you read during this period. Note: Each essay should be accompanied by a brief (one-page) summary of what you did and intended to do with the revision.
First Draft 2 (5 pages-due 10/5) Analysis of a Scene
Select a scene from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in which you are made aware of a character (probably the one you've been tracking throughout the play, but you can use any one you like) performing in some way: singing, dancing, or playing a part. Choose a speech, song, or section of the performance and analyze the way Shakespeare uses language to make us aware of the performance and its meaning. Pay particular attention to the special effects that make the scene dramatic: interesting uses of language, staging, verbal or situational irony, nonverbal arts, asides, costume, and so on. How do they convey meaning in the scene (a meaning that may be different from what the words are saying)?
Essay 2 (5 pages-due 10/12)
In developing your original idea, make sure you have an argument that proceeds from a logical thesis (test: would anyone argue against your thesis?) and that you've supported it with evidence from the play. Then you can begin to address some of the larger implications of the topic of performance. What, for example, does Shakespeare seem to be saying about language and art? What is the relationship between performance and truth? What are the ironies and problems of performance?
Don't forget to include your revision self-analysis.
First Draft 3 (5 pages-due 10/26) Structure and Theme
In the stories you've read recently, the way they're told (especially the author's decisions about structure, such as the ordering, pacing, and arrangement of events) grows out of or has something to do with what they're about (theme). Choose one story and show how the author's use of plot structure allows him or her to develop an idea. Focus on a particular place in the story, such as the beginning or end, a significant turning point, or a climax. How does the author use structural elements to heighten a particular effect or idea at that moment in the story?
Essay 3 (5 pages-due 11/9) Comparison Essay
In your essay select another story to compare with your first. You may follow through on the idea of the way the stories use certain structural features. You can also develop your ideas about theme. In doing so, you will need to reshape your original essay so that, even if you use some of the older material, you are making a more refined argument. You will also need to develop that argument, to make the case for why the comparison is significant. Think about what is more intriguing in your comparison, the similarities or the differences between the stories, and set up your argument accordingly. Try to develop your thesis, to go beyond your original observations to make a more challenging and complex point.
Include a revision statement.
Essay 4 (5 pages-due 11/30) Allusion/Image Study
In class, we will be studying a number of literary, religious, classical, nautical, and historical allusions in Melville's Billy Budd. Choose one to give a close reading. You will need to be able to identify the allusion, its source, and its meaning. You will also have to look at its context in the narrative, speculating on how Melville uses the allusion and to what effect. And finally, you will be thinking about how this particular allusion connects with other similar ones in the text, and with Melville's larger themes.
Revision (5 pages-due 12/12) Literary Argument
By this point in your study of the novel, you will be aware of the deeply problematic nature of Melville's text-its uncertain status as unpublished and probably unfinished manuscript, its ambiguities in diction, tone, characterization, and resolution of the plot, its social and philosophical ironies. Your revision will develop your study of a single allusion in one passage into a reading of Melville's literary practices in Billy Budd. How does your passage relate to the larger problems of the text? What are the implications of your reading for one's understanding of Melville's aims or achievements in writing the book?
For this essay, you will be not only revising the first, but also expanding it into a literary argument. That is, you will, as you have done in earlier essays, present an arguable thesis, support and develop it through a close reading of textual details, and arrive at a conclusion that shows the signficance of your reading for the reader's sense of the meaning of the novel. Beyond that, your essay will display your voice and methods as a critical reader, thinker, and writer.
One final revision analysis, please.