I sensed in our writing workshop today some frustration with the expectations for your written work in this course. The very questions I had hoped to illuminate with some samples of student writing--what's the difference between summary and interpretation, and what forms of interpretation can a student paper usefully broach--seemed to become more vexed, not less, by the scrutiny of some sample responses.
The array of things we read in this class do not always lend themselves as well to close reading as would, say, a modernist poem, a Shakespeare play, or a C19 novel. Figuring out how to apply the close-reading skills central to English classes to a literature that often, quite overtly, says what it means is one of the challenges of this course. To write a paper on these Enlightenment-era texts is to perform--on your own and without interlocutors--the kind of close reading we do in class, but with more scope to expand your ideas and lend them textual support.
Leaving it at "my standards are right whether you understand why or not, and I get to assign the grades that prove it" hardly seems satisfactory. I encourage you to help me understand the issues in play here by responding to this post. Let's continue the conversation about what we're trying to do when we write critically about this literature.
Deadline: Saturday (11/7), midnight.
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3 comments:
Well, initially in class I thought that Example #3 was the best balance of a slight summary but healthy analysis; followed by #2, and then #1. While #1 had some analysis, in my definition that the writer was making his own claim versus strictly regurgitating text (i.e. of this suggested analysis: "This shows that Orou has clearly been living without religion, but he is not devoid of manners... etc."), the flow of thought was too displaced and relied heavily on summary. Example #2 seemed an intermediate mix between the #1 and #3 examples because I did not feel that the analysis made were markedly original or digressed enough from "summary." It was too gray for me to recognize the purported strength of the claims/evidence/analysis of #2 because the analysis sounded too familiar and akin to summary in my head. Nonetheless, when asked to underline "analysis" apart from "summary," I found myself underlining much more in the #2 example than I did for #3. Being able to forcibly identify the evidence behind the writer's claims helped me see that #2 is a bit more original and "hitting the sweet spot" although the fine line between summary and careful analysis is still a little gray and muddled for me. As writers though, I feel that with continued practice and experiencing personal trial and error of our own writings will we, later, really be able to develop a more natural ability to detect what is summary versus plausible analysis. We are susceptible to feeling confused at this stage of our writing process since perhaps we are not yet as experienced or familiar with the nature of these texts, versus perhaps at a later period (end of the semester) when hopefully we will have acquired a healthy understanding of what determines summary versus analysis through continued readings of these writings.
I understand why people are confused. You're constantly encouraging us to say something new, interesting, and different. Although the second paragraph says something "new," it wasn't something very drastic. The paragraph was also taken out of context. I don't know what the rest of the paper was about, but it might have been something that was used as a gradual build to the point at the end of the paper. That being said, I thought that the second paragraph was the more balanced paragraph. Although the third paragraph makes really, really awesome claims about the Enlightenment, it doesn't really use the text to support what it's saying. Whereas the second paragraph used quotes to demonstrate the point of the paragraph, the third paragraph throws the quote in there as almost an afterthought.
Personally, I'm having trouble saying something interesting about these texts. Everything I think of seems too obvious to me or too far-fetched. Do you have any further advice?
I completely agree with what Kelsey has to say in terms of you “encouraging us to say something new, interesting, and different,” however I think that the examples presented—most importantly the last two paragraphs—are counterintuitive. In class you stated that example two is the overall best example because the presented thesis—“Diderot uses the characteristics of both Orou and the Almomer to challenge traditional notions of religion”—is backed up by appropriate summary length and analysis. I agree that the correct appropriations are made, however the argument I believe is nothing “new, interesting, or different” from what we have already heard in class discussion and therefore do not see any help in clarifying the expectations for our papers. As for example three, I can see the attempt to create an out of the ordinary claim. However, as stated in class, example three does not “connect the dots” to the overall analysis and examples—ultimately not helping me “connect the dots” to what you are expecting out of our papers. I understand that goal of our papers is to make some critical purchase on the texts, but I personally find it difficult to make said purchases on texts that say what they mean. A question I have is “would a good way to approach such essays be to discuss the ideas in terms of the problems it creates in society, or in terms of what the ideal fails to address?”
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