Literature, with capitals, examples, and oxford commas
Going back to my real area of expertise for a moment: Literature.
It is once again time to play "push the envelope" and write an essay. I tend, I think, to favour an almost shock-tactic of essay writing. I like to find a cool idea, and then push it as far as I think is possible, rather than sift the evidence and find a good solidly supported point. Know your enemy, I say.
Recent essays have highlighted for me some of my other writing pit-falls. The main one is a tendency to use a heavily rhetorical style, followed by a tendency to try a multi-focus approach.
For example, my Communist Manifesto essay, set up a collection of uncritical definitions of "utopia" and looked at the communist manifesto through each of those prisms. My recent Aeschylus essay followed a similar pattern: I set up a range of potential issues, and then successively endorsed or eliminated them.
Both of these essays came back C/D, and I have been pondering why. Taking as read, for a moment, that I'm a literary genius, it can't be because of the writing. What's far more likely is that the basic approach is somehow flawed. It's hard to see exactly how though.
"Is the communist manifesto a Utopian Document"? Well, let's take a range of definitions of "utopian" and check. I failed because my tutor didn't like most of my definitions of "utopia", and hence wasn't interested in whether it matched them.
"Does Aeschylus resolve the issues he raises in the Oresteia"? Well, what issues are brought to mind in the first two plays, and are they resolved in the third? The marker wrote-off most of my "issues" as irrelevant, or unknowable to an ancient audience (which was never specified in the question!) She also hinted that I'd somehow missed the whole point of the trilogy.
I think in each case, what the marker wanted was only implicitly stated. That is, some notional definition, carefully explained in the introduction and then a lengthy and detailed close-reading of the text at hand ending with a very limited-scope "answer". They were not interested in the exploration of a range of ideas within the context of the work, but a close look at a single idea.
If you want a generalized understanding of a work, and potential contexts in which it may be read, mine is the approach to go for. If you're interested in academic minutae, and it must be confessed, rigour... mine has a few limitations.
I now face the penultimate essay of my undergraduate career, and it positively invites a multi-faceted approach! So, I am instantly wary.
Write a comparative analysis of any two of the novels studied on the course taking one of the following topics as the basis for your comparison:
1. The intersection of race and gender politics
2. The values that the texts portray, and the values you take them to endorse and the relationship between these
3. The clash of cultures
4. The distinctive use of language
5. The tension between generalisation and specificity
A good response will develop an overall argument which draws some conclusion about the relationship between the texts in question and will build to this conclusion by elaborating specific aspects of the novels (including the narrative techniques used) supported directly by evidence from within the texts. You should develop your argument by reference to the critical material provided in the Course Notes, or from your own research. Be sure to cite your references appropriately.
You are just about instructed to look at one novel, pick a characteristic, compare it to the other, and repeat until satiated.
Compare/Contrast essays are typically thought to be the trickiest, because you can't develop a close-reading based essay anywhere near as easily. You must always have in your mind two distinct texts that may not have explicitly comparable passages to slot into a close-reading essay.
Obviously I could be way off base here. :) I am deeply interested in the thoughts of all my readers on this question of essay structure.
It is once again time to play "push the envelope" and write an essay. I tend, I think, to favour an almost shock-tactic of essay writing. I like to find a cool idea, and then push it as far as I think is possible, rather than sift the evidence and find a good solidly supported point. Know your enemy, I say.
Recent essays have highlighted for me some of my other writing pit-falls. The main one is a tendency to use a heavily rhetorical style, followed by a tendency to try a multi-focus approach.
For example, my Communist Manifesto essay, set up a collection of uncritical definitions of "utopia" and looked at the communist manifesto through each of those prisms. My recent Aeschylus essay followed a similar pattern: I set up a range of potential issues, and then successively endorsed or eliminated them.
Both of these essays came back C/D, and I have been pondering why. Taking as read, for a moment, that I'm a literary genius, it can't be because of the writing. What's far more likely is that the basic approach is somehow flawed. It's hard to see exactly how though.
"Is the communist manifesto a Utopian Document"? Well, let's take a range of definitions of "utopian" and check. I failed because my tutor didn't like most of my definitions of "utopia", and hence wasn't interested in whether it matched them.
"Does Aeschylus resolve the issues he raises in the Oresteia"? Well, what issues are brought to mind in the first two plays, and are they resolved in the third? The marker wrote-off most of my "issues" as irrelevant, or unknowable to an ancient audience (which was never specified in the question!) She also hinted that I'd somehow missed the whole point of the trilogy.
I think in each case, what the marker wanted was only implicitly stated. That is, some notional definition, carefully explained in the introduction and then a lengthy and detailed close-reading of the text at hand ending with a very limited-scope "answer". They were not interested in the exploration of a range of ideas within the context of the work, but a close look at a single idea.
If you want a generalized understanding of a work, and potential contexts in which it may be read, mine is the approach to go for. If you're interested in academic minutae, and it must be confessed, rigour... mine has a few limitations.
I now face the penultimate essay of my undergraduate career, and it positively invites a multi-faceted approach! So, I am instantly wary.
Write a comparative analysis of any two of the novels studied on the course taking one of the following topics as the basis for your comparison:
1. The intersection of race and gender politics
2. The values that the texts portray, and the values you take them to endorse and the relationship between these
3. The clash of cultures
4. The distinctive use of language
5. The tension between generalisation and specificity
A good response will develop an overall argument which draws some conclusion about the relationship between the texts in question and will build to this conclusion by elaborating specific aspects of the novels (including the narrative techniques used) supported directly by evidence from within the texts. You should develop your argument by reference to the critical material provided in the Course Notes, or from your own research. Be sure to cite your references appropriately.
You are just about instructed to look at one novel, pick a characteristic, compare it to the other, and repeat until satiated.
Compare/Contrast essays are typically thought to be the trickiest, because you can't develop a close-reading based essay anywhere near as easily. You must always have in your mind two distinct texts that may not have explicitly comparable passages to slot into a close-reading essay.
Obviously I could be way off base here. :) I am deeply interested in the thoughts of all my readers on this question of essay structure.