LIT 210 AMERICAN LITERATURES TO 1865
4th Unit Exam -- Many Voices of the Antebellum Nineteenth Century
(due Tuesday, 12/13, by email; Subject Line: 210 YourLastName Essay)
(plus electronic rough drafts emailed as a separate attachment, including Writer’s Checklist and 2 Peer Editing Responses; hard copies of rough stuff okay)
To articulate some of your thoughts about how these 3rd-Unit voices speak about American issues of e pluribus unum, write a 4- to 6-page essay on one of the optional topics below or a topic of your own (without repeating topics or writers you analyzed in earlier microthemes). This essay should include some research on scholarship related to your topic, consulting at least three scholarly sources. To develop your ideas, consider comparison/contrast; if you try the c/c mode, be sure to build an analysis of each writer, beyond a descriptive summary, so that you then juxtapose and contrast analyses, not just summaries. Respond to our readings, lectures, and discussions in this 3rd Unit overview of the ways different cultures and voices construct possibilities for defining “American” experience. & feel free to consult with me on developing your topic and thesis statement.
Structure Try for a well-structured essay, with 1) an intro paragraph that sets up a context for the one-sentence thesis statement typed in bold toward the end of the paragraph (= deductive structure; or if you want to try inductive structure, build toward the thesis statement typed in bold in the final paragraph); 2) a set of body paragraphs that explain and give examples, drawing on textual citations, to support the thesis; and 3) a short concluding paragraph that does more than repeat the intro, suggesting other directions or implications of the thesis (which would first show up here if you choose the inductive approach). This clear structure does not mean that the prose has to be stiff. Be as lively or wacky as you want, as well as rigorous in your critical thinking. There is room in literary criticism for personal response as well as critical analysis.
Required Write a short self-evaluation at the end of the electronic paper file (after the Works Cited): how did your writing process go; what do you feel are the paper’s strengths and weaknesses; and what might you change about the paper if you only had the time?
Logistics I will edit, grade, and respond to your paper online. NB: be sure to put the exact spelling of this heading, 210 YourLastName Essay, as your email’s subject line. Because of the overload in my inbox, I cannot guarantee that you will get credit for your online work unless you make this your subject line. To read my editing responses, be sure to view my Word.doc attachment of your edited paper in Print Layout by clicking that option under the View Menu. If you are having trouble with the electronic aspects of this assignment—or any other aspects—please talk with me.
Refer to the guidelines handout for writing and grading criteria. Look for specific passages that reflect your larger ideas, and quote those passages as you develop your thesis. (Thus in-text citations and a Works Cited are required.) Remember to use oodles of citations from the texts, shaped by your commentary. See the Mansfield Library’s online citation guide or Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual for proper MLA in-text citation and bibliographic form, or you are welcome to use the standard format from another discipline of your major (e.g., social sciences or physical sciences), as long as you are consistent.
Format The essay should be double-spaced, with one-inch margins, in type of no less than 10pt. An optional cover page with your name, the course, the date, and the assignment is ok (to add space to the essay pages). Include an original title. Again, the essay should include short, direct quotations from the texts to support your thesis. Plenty of quotations are welcome, even necessary, for close reading. Use MLA format for in-text citations. A final page should include a Works Cited, also in exact MLA format.
Due Tuesday, Dec. 13, during finals week, by email to . Send it to me as a Word.doc attachment. Note: Send only two files. The Essay, Works Cited, Self-Evaluation, and any Extra Credit should all be included in the same cyber file. The rough drafts, peer edits, and writer’s checklist make the other file. Keep a hard copy for yourself for backup, but you do not need to give me one. To help make sure your email isn’t lost in cyberspace, be sure to use this exact wording for your Subject line: 210 YourLastName Essay.
The paper will be graded on form and content, with an average of the two. Form includes clarity and style, grammar and spelling, bibliographic format, other mechanics of the presentation, plus paragraph topic sentences, transitions, and paragraph coherence and development. Content includes a single-sentence, arguable thesis focusing, again, on textual analysis with supporting logic and examples, plus range and depth of argument, originality, complexity, and awareness of opposing views.
In any writing task, all the elements are immediately in play, so they all count, though I will give you feedback where your needs are greatest. Be sure to go over and hand in the Writer’s Checklist, be sure to proofread and/or get help with proofreading, and please read carefully through the following more detailed guidelines.
More thesis statement guidelines (+ see handouts): Whether you start or end with these three key steps to building a thesis, be sure you do them as part of this short-essay exercise: 1) narrow the topic, 2) make a clear assertion about it, and 3) briefly preview or outline the discussion. Note that a thesis is more focused than a topic as it explains what you think about the topic. A thesis assertion in literary analysis does more than describe: it analyzes a textual dynamic. It shows not only what, but how, why, or so what about a topic as it works in the text. Check the draft thesis by asking at least two questions: “is it focused on textual analysis” and “is it debatable?” i.e., if the debatable opposite or negation of the thesis is a non-issue, then the thesis probably needs to assert a more specific analysis that would be arguable. So be careful not to just summarize the piece of literature. Instead explain to a fellow student—who has read this chosen fiction or poetry—some aspect of how it works.
To be sure that your thesis is built on an analytical assertion, rather than on descriptive summary, your essay should go beyond a book report into a process of separating out parts and then putting them back together, that is, showing how some of those parts work dynamically to make one aspect of the story work. That’s analysis. A further stylistic and structural boost often develops if your thesis explicitly lists and also labels those parts, steps, categories, or features that you are analyzing. Another way to say this is do the work for the reader. Spell it out. Keep a textual focus for literary analysis in order to detail how, why, and/or so what? Look for specific passages that reflect and stimulate your larger ideas, and quote those passages as you develop your thesis. (Again a Works Cited is required.) Feel free to write both critical analysis and personal response, to be autobiographical, to discuss the reader as well as the text – as long as you tie the discussion closely and critically to textual passages. Remember to draw on plenty of citations from the texts, shaped by your commentary.
Optional Topics
Combine and customize the following topics to fit your special interests. Strive for close reading of particular textual passages. In some questions, I’ve made suggestions for examples which focus on particular writers, but you can apply almost any question to almost any of the writings. If you like, you can shape any question as a comparison/ contrast between two writers. Pick any of these ways to generate and focus your topic.
In addition to the questions below, you may build from the discussion question handouts any question that relates to ways that these voices offer examples of or exceptions to the colonial binary or the nexus of exchange as options for relations.
1. In this unit on “many voices of the antebellum nineteenth century” we have discussed rhetorical strategies of “mastering the master’s discourse” by which women and minorities have sought to make their voices heard. Writers such as Fuller, Stanton, Douglass, and Jacobs have summoned the different rhetorics of religious discourse, of classical philosophy, of civil lawmaking, of pastoral romance, and of romantic poetry, among others, to express their messages of human rights, their philosophical contemplations, etc. Choose two writers from our unit, select specific lines from their writing, and compare and contrast how they utilize specific discourses to convey their specific purposes. Be sure to map their larger political or cultural projects, and then show how their language, their specific diction, works toward those projects. Consider comparing and contrasting not only their strategies, but their different effects, successes, and failures, in regard to their specific audiences.
2. Transcendentalism might be the central philosophy of American national identity. American writers continually focus on the individual in touch with the Oversoul, a certain paradox of the universal and the particular, the unum and the pluribus. Choose one or a few passages from Emerson’s or Thoreau’s enunciation of this central Transcendental idea, and show how it relates to the works and claims of one or more of the other writers in this unit. For instance, how does the Oversoul/individual dynamic function in Apess? (even though he’s from Unit 2) or in Fern? or in Douglass? or Jacobs? or Grimke? or Fuller? Consider Stanton’s focus on feminine “Sentiment” and how that might or might not resonate with Emerson and or Thoreau. What is it in the nineteenth-century feminist project or in the movement for Native American or African American rights which affirms the Oversoul in the individual? What is Transcendentalist about those politics?
3. Emerson: “No truer American existed than Thoreau . . .” (in “Thoreau”). Discuss why Thoreau might be the fulfillment of Emerson’s “American Scholar” or “Self-Reliance.” How might he differ from or contradict Emerson? In the comparison/ contrast, give full treatment to each of their ideas. What are some core points which Emerson makes which carry over in Thoreau’s works, or which Thoreau’s works contradict? What is the significance of these similarities and differences?
4. Compare specific claims of Fuller, Stanton, or Grimke about the problems and solutions of women’s roles in their era to the short fiction of Hawthorne and/or Melville. Are Hawthorne, or Melville making feminists statements in these stories? Do the tragic endings of their tales, and the tragic endings of their heroines, highlight the mistakes of gender socialization in EuroAmerican culture? How do the thick ironies and the intense female images in Hawthorne’s or Melville’s fiction reinforce or contradict traditional women’s roles? In “The Birthmark,” or “Paradise/Tartarus,” respectively, do Hawthorne or Melville agree or disagree with specific claims in “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes,” in “Woman in the 19th Century,” or in “Declaration of Sentiments”? What is it about the social condition of women in their time which trapped women, and how did those early feminist writers describe those conditions? What do Hawthorne or Melville say that echoes or contradicts passages in the feminist writers? Citing specific passages, how would those feminist thinkers have defined the women’s problem(s) depicted in the short fiction and any possible solutions to their situations?
5. How do Hawthorne’s or Melville’s interest in “the dark side” relate to Emerson’s optimistic Transcendentalism? Consider the Puritan legacy of “original sin,” and how these writers might mediate that legacy with Emerson’s “trust thyself.”
6. Consider the central role of violence in American national identity, and explore how it plays out in Douglass, Jacobs, Melville, Whitman, or Dickinson. What causes it and what does (?) it solve? Look at specific passages and show the dynamics of violence in those lines to work through the larger cultural issues of the text.
7. How does Clifford’s comparison of the absorption/resistance binary versus the nexus of exchange as models of cultural and historical analysis help to understand the dynamics of a particular passage of these writers? For instance, does Douglass achieve freedom through a (violent) binary while Jacobs reaches hers through the working of a nexus – or is each story more complex than that? Or how do Whitman and Dickinson compare in relation to binary thinking? Or Whitman and Douglass?
8. Through specific lines of poetry, consider Whitman’s and Dickinson’s tone and voice with different aspects of individualism and definitions of the self. How are their versions of individualism similar or different? What do they say about American options in the public and private spheres?
Extra credit, option 1: discuss the topic of “white guilt” in relation to voices of diversity we have seen in four centuries of American literature. What responsibilities do contemporary white Americans have to the past and present injustices of colonialism and slavery? What responsibilities do contemporary people of color have to call white Americans to account for past and present injustices? If your great-grandfather was a horse thief, should you now share the revenues of your million-dollar horse ranch with poor descendants of his original victims? How do past injustices bear on present American experience? Are these questions irrelevant? Should these questions be addressed by individuals? by society? by the government? Yes? No? Why? Why not?
Extra credit, option 2: discuss the nineteenth-century feminist focus on “sentiment” and domesticity in relation to twenty-first-century “chic flicks” or to the focus in daytime/“women’s” TV on soap operas about domestic relationships. Are there any links? Are they silly? Are they important? Why?