I read the Paper 3 Prompt today, and I also talked to Monique & Kiyomi in office hours to try to get a sense of what it looked like from the student's perspective.
There are two things in particular that I want to change about the prompt.
A) The prompt asks you to argue that he published ending of the book is "better" than the unpublished ending, and support that thesis with relevant details. I find this focus highly problematic. I think it will lead to most of the papers being basically the same, and to most of them being pure opinions or evaluations rather than analysis. Here's my reworded thesis question: Why might Austen have chosen to revise the original ending in this particular way?
B) This is a lesser concern, but still an important one. The prompt focuses almost exclusively on what we would call narratology (e.g. pacing, point of view). It's like the prompt is saying, "your paper must be about tomato sauce." For my section, your paper does not necessarily have to be about tomato sauce, although this is a good topic. As I said, you can focus on other elements as your basis for comparison (e.g. setting, e.g. character(s), e.g. satire, e.g. the depiction of emotional reactions or behaviors, e.g. the parallel between the social relationships between the characters and British society as a whole, or whatever else we talked about or didn't talk about). Cheese, peppers, onions, mushrooms, pepperoni, sausage, pineapples, broccoli (!?!), whatever you like. But as I said today, your paper does need to have a particular focus. The one thing you really shouldn't write about is the use of dashes and ampersands (&)... it isn't clear at what stage Austen abandoned the draft, but these are in all likelihood remnants of her usual drafting process that she would have polished out had this actually been published. So this would be the equivalent of writing about the box the pizza came in, I guess.
In sum, here's the formula for your thesis: Austen made changes X, Y, Z in order to better convey themes A, B, C. Don't take the number of my variables literally... you don't need three of each. Nor my use of the word "theme" if that word means something really specific to you from your previous English classes. I'm just saying you need to relate particular details to the whole of the book.
IDEAS DRAFT
-----------
1) Write a brief Austen style character analysis of someone you know. You can choose what level of satire to use, how sympathetic you are to this person, etc. But try to use irony and free indirect discourse at some point.
2) Make a list of broad similarities and differences between the two endings... we may do this in class on Friday.
3) Choose a new keyword that occurs repeatedly in the ending (one version or both), and use the OED to figure out the different/changing/competing meanings that word would have had to an 1814 reader.
4) Choose three short passages, somewhere between a 1/2 page and a page in length. Perhaps two from the published ending and one from the unpublished ending. Do a close analysis of these passages in which you identify at least one weird or notable thing about each. Just like today I chose a passage and used Ann blushing as a weird or notable detail. It could be a minor plot point, a turn of phrase, an element of scenic description, an instance of FID, or whatever. Remember, we got a whole conversation out of an exclamation point the other day, and Leah & Stephanie got one out of a variant spelling. It might help if the detail recurs more than once within the passage.
5) Scavenger hunt. Find at least three other instances of each of the three details in the rest of the assigned pages, probably two in the published ending and one in the unpublished ending.
6) Decision time. Which one of these details is your paper going to be about? It obviously helps to choose one that:
-occurs repeatedly in the book
-occurs in both versions of the ending
-might be a bit different in the two versions
-links in some interesting way to the overall themes of the novel
I found this really great olive. It's not like other olives that are usually on pizza. It's really interesting to compare different olives, isn't it? We can learn a lot about pizza in general by thinking about olives.
7) Thesis time. You need to relate the olives to the pizza. Here's the formula again: Austen made changes X, Y, Z in order to better convey themes A, B, C. Or, "Austen changed the purple kalamata olives in the original ending to green pecholine olives in the published ending, because she wanted to make the pizza saltier."
8) Scavenger hunt, the revenge... rescavengation. Whatever detail you chose, find three more similar/different uses of it in the published ending, two in the unpublished ending, and two elsewhere in the book. I suppose, given today's lecture, that the mere absence of it might be interesting.
9) Outline time. You need to create an order for the presentation of details in your body paragraphs. By this point you have gathered a list of particular passages and sentences from Persuasion. I won't bother to count how many... it's a bunch. Discard your findings from pt. 4 & 5 above that aren't about olives, in other words that are about other details that you're not focusing on. Now create an order for the rest. Here's a rough formula, please feel free to change it.
I. Introduction
-My aren't there a lot of olives in this pizza.
-Olives are the key to understanding this pizza, or at least provide an interesting perspective on this pizza.
-Why are olives important in this pizza? Because they make it salty.
-When Austen made her first pizza, there were either no olives in it, or olives that weren't salty enough. Or olives that clashed with the other ingredients. Or whatever.
-Thesis: Austen changed the type/number of olives to strengthen the saltiness.
II. Olives in the other slices of this pizza (earlier chapters.)
-Details/analysis: kalamata olives, picholine olives, other olives
III. Olives in the unpublished final slice
-Details/analysis: kalamata olives, picholine olives, other olives
IV. Olives in the revised final slice
-Details/analysis: kalamata olives, picholine olives, other olives
V. Conclusion
-restate thesis
-some kind of twist or new idea (don't actually deal with this until final draft)
ALTERNATE
I. same as above
II. same as above
III. kalamata olives
-in the other parts of the pizza
-in the unpublished final slice
-in the revised final slice
IV. picholine olives
-in the other parts of the pizza
-in the unpublished final slice
-in the revised final slice
V. other olives
-in the other parts of the pizza
-in the unpublished final slice
-in the revised final slice
V. Conclusion
-restate thesis
-some kind of twist or new idea
ALTERNATE
rearrange the order of the "rest of the book," "unpublished," and "published" sections... you could, for instance, begin with the published ending, then backtrack to the rest of the book, then discuss the unpublished ending... or whatever
No comments:
Post a Comment