Final Project Abstract: The Magic Quill
Originally Submitted April 18, 2011: An experiment in alternative knowledge-making.
For my final project I chose to write a fairytale about the changing conceptions of error and "good writing" during the last approximately sixty years. The story follows three sisters who are sent on a quest to answer the question, "What is good spell writing?" by a mysterious sorceress. Each sister's answer mirrors a certain period in the history of composition theory. Below is my rationale and explanation for the story.
* * *
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to simultaneously measure both the position and velocity of an object in motion accurately. The more exact the measurement of one property is measured, the less exactly the other can be known. I experienced a similar conundrum in writing a fairytale based on composition theory. The project seeks to be both a good story, in that it is pleasant to read, and a good composition project, in that it addresses and, perhaps, analyzes certain points of composition theory in a useful way. I often felt in the process that the more attention I paid to the story element, the less I could be sure that the theory was being represented and vice versa, but I’ve tried to achieve a happy medium where both story and theory are served.
The story functions in two ways regarding theory. More explicitly, the quest narrative explores the idea of “good writing” in composition theory and its evolution from an idea of grammatical and syntactical correctness separate from content to a complex and shifting concept that includes such key ideas as ideology, genre theory, and the social situatedness of language. I draw on four main texts as a basis for the answers given by the three sisters.
Eleanor’s answer is grounded in traditional thinking around the middle of the twentieth century that good writing could be equated with correct grammar. This view was widespread, but for the purposes of this project, I have drawn on Robert C. Pooley’s Teaching English Usage from 1946 as a guide. Rose’s answer is drawn from Mina Shaughnessy’s landmark work, Errors and Expectations (1977). Sophie’s answer is drawn from both Min-Zhan Lu’s critique of Shaughnessy, which focuses on the ideological nature of language (1991) and Russell and Yañez’s “Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians: Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education” (2003), which links genre theory and activity theory to explore the ways in which writing is socially situated.
More implicitly, in choosing to compose a story, I draw on the feminist tradition that rejects positivist notions of objective truth and has sought to value subjective knowledge-making and non-traditional formats alongside more familiar academic forms. I’m also working with the idea that fairytales and folklore are not merely fiction, but also serve to transmit cultural values and ideals. Fairytales change over time because cultural values change.
Within the story, I’ve chosen to preserve some traditional tropes while troubling others. I’ve kept the general setting of a pre-industrial society of small monarchies. I’ve also chosen to use the trope of three siblings being sent on a quest by a figure who is presumably wiser than them. In traditional fairytales, these would be brothers, but, continuing with my feminist stance, I’ve chosen sisters. In fact, the majority of the identified characters are female. The only identified male who is not cast in a negative light is the baker, who is outside of the realm of school magic and is also intended to be of a lower class.
I’ve specifically avoided offering any physical descriptions of any of the women in the story, and very few physical descriptions of people at all. This is to allow for slippage and freedom in readers’ image of the characters. This ambiguity is in line with the overall theme of the story and, I felt, more effective than trying to pin down and describe various kinds of difference among the characters. In addition, traditional fairytales tend to focus on marriage as the ultimate goal for female characters. In some pre-Disney versions, women even self-amputate (Cinderella) or murder their sisters (Two Sisters) in their attempts to achieve an ideal marriage. Both to serve the plot of the story and because of this gruesome history, I’ve left any question of matrimony or romance out of my story. Instead, the happy ending (for Sophie) is a professional one.
Magic, of course, is a frequent presence in fairy tales. Here I’ve tried to both preserve tradition and question it. I use a number of words in reference to magic, in the same way that people use a number of words to describe language, composition, and writing. I’ve been purposefully careless in my use of alternating terms to mirror the way that different theorists may mean quite different things by the same terms. I’ve drawn some on William A. Covino’s Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing Imagination in conceptualizing how composition concepts might map onto fictional magic. Finally, I don’t see the conclusion of the story as an arrival at a “correct” answer about magic or composition, but rather as an acknowledgement that the (perhaps insurmountable) complexity of the question of good (spell) writing resists a single, definitive answer, and that work on the subject is ongoing.
(Special thanks to Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons for inspiring both the subtitle and my early interest in non-traditional fairytales.)
Works Cited
Covino, William A. Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing Imagination. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.
Pooley, Robert C. Teaching English Usage. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1946.
Lu, Min-Zhan. “Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of Linguistic Innocence.” Miller 772-782.
Miller, Susan, ed. The Norton Book of Composition Studies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Shaughnessy, Mina P. “Introduction to Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing.” Miller 387-396.
Russell, David R. and Arturo Yañez. “Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians: Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education.” Writing Selves/Writing Societies. Ed. Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2003.
For my final project I chose to write a fairytale about the changing conceptions of error and "good writing" during the last approximately sixty years. The story follows three sisters who are sent on a quest to answer the question, "What is good spell writing?" by a mysterious sorceress. Each sister's answer mirrors a certain period in the history of composition theory. Below is my rationale and explanation for the story.
* * *
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to simultaneously measure both the position and velocity of an object in motion accurately. The more exact the measurement of one property is measured, the less exactly the other can be known. I experienced a similar conundrum in writing a fairytale based on composition theory. The project seeks to be both a good story, in that it is pleasant to read, and a good composition project, in that it addresses and, perhaps, analyzes certain points of composition theory in a useful way. I often felt in the process that the more attention I paid to the story element, the less I could be sure that the theory was being represented and vice versa, but I’ve tried to achieve a happy medium where both story and theory are served.
The story functions in two ways regarding theory. More explicitly, the quest narrative explores the idea of “good writing” in composition theory and its evolution from an idea of grammatical and syntactical correctness separate from content to a complex and shifting concept that includes such key ideas as ideology, genre theory, and the social situatedness of language. I draw on four main texts as a basis for the answers given by the three sisters.
Eleanor’s answer is grounded in traditional thinking around the middle of the twentieth century that good writing could be equated with correct grammar. This view was widespread, but for the purposes of this project, I have drawn on Robert C. Pooley’s Teaching English Usage from 1946 as a guide. Rose’s answer is drawn from Mina Shaughnessy’s landmark work, Errors and Expectations (1977). Sophie’s answer is drawn from both Min-Zhan Lu’s critique of Shaughnessy, which focuses on the ideological nature of language (1991) and Russell and Yañez’s “Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians: Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education” (2003), which links genre theory and activity theory to explore the ways in which writing is socially situated.
More implicitly, in choosing to compose a story, I draw on the feminist tradition that rejects positivist notions of objective truth and has sought to value subjective knowledge-making and non-traditional formats alongside more familiar academic forms. I’m also working with the idea that fairytales and folklore are not merely fiction, but also serve to transmit cultural values and ideals. Fairytales change over time because cultural values change.
Within the story, I’ve chosen to preserve some traditional tropes while troubling others. I’ve kept the general setting of a pre-industrial society of small monarchies. I’ve also chosen to use the trope of three siblings being sent on a quest by a figure who is presumably wiser than them. In traditional fairytales, these would be brothers, but, continuing with my feminist stance, I’ve chosen sisters. In fact, the majority of the identified characters are female. The only identified male who is not cast in a negative light is the baker, who is outside of the realm of school magic and is also intended to be of a lower class.
I’ve specifically avoided offering any physical descriptions of any of the women in the story, and very few physical descriptions of people at all. This is to allow for slippage and freedom in readers’ image of the characters. This ambiguity is in line with the overall theme of the story and, I felt, more effective than trying to pin down and describe various kinds of difference among the characters. In addition, traditional fairytales tend to focus on marriage as the ultimate goal for female characters. In some pre-Disney versions, women even self-amputate (Cinderella) or murder their sisters (Two Sisters) in their attempts to achieve an ideal marriage. Both to serve the plot of the story and because of this gruesome history, I’ve left any question of matrimony or romance out of my story. Instead, the happy ending (for Sophie) is a professional one.
Magic, of course, is a frequent presence in fairy tales. Here I’ve tried to both preserve tradition and question it. I use a number of words in reference to magic, in the same way that people use a number of words to describe language, composition, and writing. I’ve been purposefully careless in my use of alternating terms to mirror the way that different theorists may mean quite different things by the same terms. I’ve drawn some on William A. Covino’s Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing Imagination in conceptualizing how composition concepts might map onto fictional magic. Finally, I don’t see the conclusion of the story as an arrival at a “correct” answer about magic or composition, but rather as an acknowledgement that the (perhaps insurmountable) complexity of the question of good (spell) writing resists a single, definitive answer, and that work on the subject is ongoing.
(Special thanks to Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons for inspiring both the subtitle and my early interest in non-traditional fairytales.)
Works Cited
Covino, William A. Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing Imagination. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.
Pooley, Robert C. Teaching English Usage. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1946.
Lu, Min-Zhan. “Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of Linguistic Innocence.” Miller 772-782.
Miller, Susan, ed. The Norton Book of Composition Studies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Shaughnessy, Mina P. “Introduction to Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing.” Miller 387-396.
Russell, David R. and Arturo Yañez. “Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians: Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education.” Writing Selves/Writing Societies. Ed. Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2003.