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Microsoft Word - English 211 Response Paper 3.docx English 211. Response 3. Due Friday, 4/16. Writing back to a classic o Take on a character. Imagine the point of view of a marginal or implied character from one of our readings. It might be the woman described in a blazon, or the young man of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; Ariel, Caliban, or his mother, Sycorax; Grendel’s Mother; one of the Wife of Bath’s husbands; or even an inanimate object, like Caliban’s log, or Donne’s flea. Any readings from this semester are options available to you. o Choose a style. Style is also up to you: you might respond in verse, or in a dramatic monologue, or in a letter addressed to another character. Your main task is to be both specific and imaginative: think carefully about what we truly know about your character, both their past and their personality. What gaps do you need to fill in with your imagination, and where can you build on what the text tells you? o While your main text should be limited to the voice of your chosen subject, feel free to make liberal use of footnotes: either to comment on your own choices, or to refer to moments of the text that have inspired you. This is not mandatory, but you may use this strategy at any points where you’d like to explain your choices. o Length. You should aim for about 2 pages, double-spaced, of total writing. If you choose to write in verse, you are welcome to be more brief. If you think you’d like to write in a particular form – like a sonnet – that is also an option. Just touch base with me and we can discuss parameters. Due: You should submit your creation on Blackboard by 11:59 PM on Friday, 4/16. Microsoft Word - ENG 211 Response paper 1.docx By 2/22 at 11:59 PM: Upload your paper as a .doc or .docx file to Blackboard (under “Assignments.”) If you have any trouble, you can alternately email it to
[email protected]. ENG 211: Response paper 1: Due by Monday, 2/15, by 11:59 PM. Your mission: 1. Choose a brief passage that you think best exemplifies the topic you choose: it should be less than 5 lines of poetry or prose. 2. Type out the passage and place it at the top of your page (your name and the date can be higher up, but the rest of your response should be below the quotation.) 3. Before you begin writing, take some notes on everything you notice about the passage: whose voice is it in? Are they speaking or writing to someone else? Do you notice any examples of rhetorical or poetic technique? Metaphors? The repetition of words, ideas, or sounds? Are there any striking or surprising images or phrases? Does anything not quite make sense or seem like it doesn’t belong? You won’t include these notes in your response paper, but they will give you all your fodder for your response. 4. Begin writing. You don’t have too much space, so don’t bother with a formal introduction or conclusion: dive right into your observations about your passage and your insights into the theme you’ve chosen. What insight does your passage give us into this dimension of the text? What conclusions might it help you draw about this theme/question? 5. Feel free to bring in other moments from the text in a secondary way for comparisons, but keep your eye on your original passage. This should be brief and focused. And, don’t go past 3 pages! Concision is your friend. You’ll have a chance to return later in the semester to the issues you bring up here. Choose one of the themes/questions below as a starting point. You do not need to cover every angle brought up by your question: consider these a spur to your reflection. 1.Who lives, who dies, who tells your story: Which characters get to tell their own story and which do not? Choose one example from any of our readings and consider the stakes of storytelling for how characters are understood and remembered. 2.Outsiders and travelers: What is the experience of a character who is away from home, or at the outskirts of their society? How does a text represent that experience? What does this teach about either the values or the dangers of belonging to a social group? 3.Violence: Choose a violent action or event. What drives it? Who suffers? How does the author make visible both the act of violence and its consequences? 4.Gender: Choose a character whose experience of their world is shaped by their gender: how does being a man or a woman alter how a character engages with marriage, or with court culture, or with war? Microsoft Word - ENG 211 Response paper 1.docx By 2/22 at 11:59 PM: Upload your paper as a .doc or .docx file to Blackboard (under “Assignments.”) If you have any trouble, you can alternately email it to
[email protected]. ENG 211: Response paper 1: Due by Monday, 2/15, by 11:59 PM. Your mission: 1. Choose a brief passage that you think best exemplifies the topic you choose: it should be less than 5 lines of poetry or prose. 2. Type out the passage and place it at the top of your page (your name and the date can be higher up, but the rest of your response should be below the quotation.) 3. Before you begin writing, take some notes on everything you notice about the passage: whose voice is it in? Are they speaking or writing to someone else? Do you notice any examples of rhetorical or poetic technique? Metaphors? The repetition of words, ideas, or sounds? Are there any striking or surprising images or phrases? Does anything not quite make sense or seem like it doesn’t belong? You won’t include these notes in your response paper, but they will give you all your fodder for your response. 4. Begin writing. You don’t have too much space, so don’t bother with a formal introduction or conclusion: dive right into your observations about your passage and your insights into the theme you’ve chosen. What insight does your passage give us into this dimension of the text? What conclusions might it help you draw about this theme/question? 5. Feel free to bring in other moments from the text in a secondary way for comparisons, but keep your eye on your original passage. This should be brief and focused. And, don’t go past 3 pages! Concision is your friend. You’ll have a chance to return later in the semester to the issues you bring up here. Choose one of the themes/questions below as a starting point. You do not need to cover every angle brought up by your question: consider these a spur to your reflection. 1.Who lives, who dies, who tells your story: Which characters get to tell their own story and which do not? Choose one example from any of our readings and consider the stakes of storytelling for how characters are understood and remembered. 2.Outsiders and travelers: What is the experience of a character who is away from home, or at the outskirts of their society? How does a text represent that experience? What does this teach about either the values or the dangers of belonging to a social group? 3.Violence: Choose a violent action or event. What drives it? Who suffers? How does the author make visible both the act of violence and its consequences? 4.Gender: Choose a character whose experience of their world is shaped by their gender: how does being a man or a woman alter how a character engages with marriage, or with court culture, or with war? Response paper 2: Renaissance Encounters. Due Friday, 3/26, by 11:59 PM on Blackboard. Your response should focus on one or more of our readings from the Renaissance: Thomas More’s Utopia, Sir Walter Raleigh’s account of Guyana, or Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Your response paper will ultimately compare two examples. ★ On Monday, March 22, we will begin class with some freewriting and brainstorming: come in with your examples in mind! Here is what I’m asking you to do: 1. Choose a scene or passage from one of these three readings where a character or narrator encounters a new person, new environment, or new social setting. Choose a scene that reflects one of the following scenarios: 1. A misunderstanding or misreading, upon encountering something new. 2. An attempt to describe something new to an audience/listener who hasn’t seen it before. 2. Ask yourself: If you chose #1: Does anyone ever correct this misunderstanding? What are its consequences -- are they tragic or comic, for example? Are there other characters or perspectives to whom this misunderstanding is evident? How does this misunderstanding affect the power dynamics in the text? Do the power dynamics shift across the course of this scene? How do you know that something has changed? If you chose #2: What has put the character or narrator in the position of trying to explain or describe something new? How do they approach the challenge of describing something their listener/audience hasn’t seen before? What senses are involved? What literary techniques do they use? What do they aim to achieve with this description: power, pleasure in their listener, persuasion in inspiring their listener to take a particular action? 3. Having thought through these questions, think of a second scene that seems to you to be in dialogue with your scene: does it share any qualities? Does it seem to be trying -- or failing -- to accomplish something similar? [Note that you are welcome to choose this second scene from one of our earlier readings (Beowulf, Arthurian legend, or Chaucer.)] 4. Now, write! Your response paper should: