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| Clio, by Vermeer (1665) |
We'll discuss writing issues on Friday, particularly the challenges of writing accurately and insightfully about the literature of the past. There is much that one doesn't know, and relatively little that one can state for certain and with confidence. That situation makes it easy to fall back on either generalities that are so vague that they can't be wrong (but then, they can't be interestingly right either) or narrow factual claims that seem too obvious to warrant restating. We'll explore some ways to write thoughtfully between these two extremes.
Feel free to post here with reflections, observations, or questions about the second assignment, the ECCO text you've chosen, difficulties you're having, strange things you've discovered...
Posts before Saturday (4/2) at midnight count toward Week 10. Posts after that count for Week 11.
12 comments:
I found the that the second paper was much easier to write then the first one. I knew what was expected of me and Ms. Wilcox's grading style. I found it difficult to tie my first topic into the second part of the paper. Overall, I thought the paper went well.
My papers have taken a lot of time to complete; much more than I have experienced in prior papers. I don't know if this is typical of lierary papers or if it has to do with my learning curve. Anyone out there have an insight?
I think that the writing expectations for college is a lot more demanding then it was in high school. It would seem that professors are looking for a more direct approach as well as focusing beyond the text rather than the lax grading expected in the past. Let's just say I'm glad I'm not an English major (haha).
The writing we're doing for this class is so divergent from the historical essays of my recent past that I have to consciously deprogram myself from the autopilot I've been cruising on to focus on the text itself instead of the historical peculiarities I encounter within it.
It must be noted how wonderful of a research utility ECCO is. I'm using it in my Hist 498 course on the Enlightenment and it's just impossible to undervalue it. The functionality in the advanced search area even allows you to account for the nonstandardized spelling of the period. Pretty outstanding.
I think the hardest thing about this second writing assignment is the lack of understanding about the past. Yes I can look at history, but it's harder writing about the past without having firsthand knowledge about cultural assumptions of the time. I feel like it's much easier to miss something that should be obvious when I'm trying to analyze a text of the past. Or, it's much easier to place my contemporary cultural assumptions over the text of the past, therefore making wrong interpretations or assumptions.
I would have to agree with Katie that it was difficult to write about a time period that we don't actually live in. Without reference to secondary sources, it was hard to know everything about what people of that time thought. I did like writing the second paper better than the first, just because there was more information to include. It was an interesting assignment to try and include two different texts within one thesis.
I found the second paper to be difficult for some reason. I just couldn't find a suitable tie-in for the two texts that I chose. I found good quotes to use, but my analysis and interpretation always fell short. However, I found that the second paper was more comfortable to write because it was longer and allowed me to write about what I wanted without too much limitation. It was also good practice for a college paper. I'm too used to high school literary analyses. I hope I can adjust soon...
I really enjoyed the exercise we did on Friday to help us get a gist of what we have to write for our ECCO paper. I must have been spacing out that day because I thought we were just analyzing some random piece of literature for fun. Haha...but yeah, I hope this ECCO paper won't be too difficult, and that it actually becomes an interesting project.
Class on Friday really helped with the ways that we should evaluate the text that we choose to use from ECCO. Reading the instructions it is easy to try to follow them, but in class we were actually going through the text the ways that it should be done. I found it helpful because with those types of text, it is easy to become lost in the words and structural approach to the text. By doing that one may become overwhelmed or over look important information that can be used for the paper. With the papers that were just returned I did not expect the grade received partly because of the text that we were evaluating. The second paper was not as easy as I thought it would be though.
For the second paper, I have been frustrated with choosing an appropriate topic which I can create a strong argument. This assignment is much more open-ended, and I have been struggling with narrowing down my search to find a text that meets the criteria for the assignment but is also appealing to me. Once I find the text, I predict that the actual writing of the paper will flow smoothly since we now have a better understanding of the course’s writing expectations.
I agreee with Celeste one of my biggest problems is that it has been really hard attempting to narrow down what I want tot write about. There are so many things that can be written since there is not set contraints on what the topic is suppose to be about, that's also one of the most exciting parts of the second paper. We are allowed to basically choose any argument that we want to make and as long as we can support it with facts from the story, there is no limit to what we can write about. Also I find it better now that we have our first papers back, because we know what we need to fix and what criteria is used for grading papers.
For the second paper, finding an article that really interested me and was of appropriate length was one of my biggest problems. Although, we had to turn in a proposal that kind of helped outline the structure of the second paper I still ran into issues about actually creating an interpretive argument based on the specific type of document I choose. However, I do agree that I believe writing this paper is a little more easier because we are aware of what is expected of us and I believe our writing style has improved since we are familiar with 18th century text now.
I agree with JeTara. So far my most time-consuming task had to be finding a good article to write about that I could not only find interesting, but not have to scroll through multiple dozens of pages to find. Turning in the proposals only helped me really find a topic to write about, and not necessarily give me a good idea on how I would write the paper.
But once I figured out where I'm going with this paper it does seem to be a little easier to write than the first paper. I think the fact that I chose the piece that I'm writing about helps me to stay motivated to actually try on the paper, rather than just needing to get it done in order to pass the class. It was also helpful to take KW's comments and adjust what I wrote to what she said.
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