Core Humanities Seminar (1001), fall 2001

Paper 1

This is not a regular paper but a series of exercises designed to give you practice with close reading and textual analysis.

Please compare a passage from Behn’s Oroonoko to a passage from Equiano’s Narrative. Suggested passages are below, or you are welcome (even encouraged) to choose your own passages. (These may extend work you’ve done in either your reading journal or your response papers.) As this is not a regular paper, you do not need an introduction or conclusion, but should just jump right in to your analysis.

Papers should be double-spaced, in a standard font, with standard margins, etc. Title pages are not necessary.

Suggested passages:
Oroonoko: p. 38, p. 44 (either top paragraph or middle paragraph), p. 64, 79
Equiano’s Narrative: p. 56 (middle paragraph), p. 83 (middle of page), p. 105, p. 139

Think about the paper in three parts: a detailed discussion of each passage (approximately a page each), followed by a comparison (about a page). For each passage, it may be helpful to think about what the author means to convey, and how she or he goes about doing this. You should be addressing both the main claim (the goal, the "what") of the passage, and the techniques (the means, the "how") of the passage, and considering how these two aspects of the passage relate to each other. In the comparison section, you should then compare the two ways the authors achieve their effects.

Your analysis of each passage should begin with a specific claim (the point you want to make about it), and then a discussion of the passage that supports your claim.

Note the order: your analysis should be organized by a point and your discussions should refer back to that point.

But also note that your claim may not be apparent to you until you’ve actually written your account of the passage. Drafts are occasions to work out your understanding of the material. And if you don’t know exactly what your main claim is at the beginning, that’s ok. Start writing about what is happening and you will (really!) arrive at something by the end of your discussion.

It is the work of editing to rearrange your analysis into a reader-friendly format that will allow the reader to see your claim and follow your discussion as an explanation of that point. The points that come first in your final draft are often what you arrive at last in your early draft.

On Wednesday (9/12) bring rough drafts of at least the analyses of the two passages to class. You will exchange your draft with a classmate, and work on editing his or her paper in our workshop. This will allow each of you to practice revision on someone else’s paper and have the benefit of someone else’s comments on your own. (You may keep your paper anonymous if you want.)

Revised, final drafts are due in class on Friday (9/14)—please hand in your draft along with your final paper.