Another Post-Modern Text...

Dictee is on-line! I am not sure if on your own computers you'd need to download files (I didn't), or sign up for anything (I didn't).

Here is a website that has some of the pages and some provocative questions to help understand and articulate your ideas of why Cha made the aesthetic choices she did...

Form and Content and Author

To help you meditate on the texts we have read and explored together for your final essay, I thought it would be helpful to provide you with a few articles in which the idea of "form and content" becomes a larger part of the discussion of the writer.

As we discussed in class superficially in class, form and content often meet with the author's thematic intent, or their thematic/cultural statement.

Check out what American writer Tobias Wolff has to say about the short story as an American form -- on page 2 of this interview...

Here is an article from Poets & Writers on how one writer "accidentally" became a memoirist!

And here is a provoking opinion piece from The New York Times which discusses John Updike, the novelist, and the scope or scale of what he set out to do as a writer...

Also, here's a fantastic poem from Sherman Alexie in the current issue of The New Yorker, which has the same kind of attitude the exemplifies his writing...

Final: Lit Crit 2

Form, Meet Content. Content, Meet Author.
(250 pts)

Due: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 by noon, either in mailbox or by e-mail

Write a literary analysis in which you discuss both Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric and one other text (or set of poems) from one of the authors discussed in

- You will want to have a thesis statement that clarifies your argument on the relationship between authorial identity, form and content, as evidenced in two texts.
- As always, provide lines of texts that support thesis, and explain how lines do so.
- Cite the page number of all quoted, paraphrased or summarized text from the stories at the end of each citation.
- Provide Work Cited Page
- For longer quotes (four lines or more) follow special MLA formatting guidelines
- Provide a title that clarifies thesis and subject matter – be creative, grab reader’s attention. This will be part of essay grade.
- Avoid use of “I” in essay, as “I” is NOT the subject. The use or non-use of first person has nothing to do with “my opinion.” Use of this rhetorical structure has to deal with subject of writing. “I” is not the subject. The stories and the writers are.

The essay must be a minimum of four (4) complete pages, double-spaced, using a 12-point standard font, with a maximum length of six (6) complete pages.


Final Prompt:

As we end our journey together in exploring these Contemporary American texts as cultural responses, you are to discuss the relationship between form and content in the work of Claudia Rankine and one other author of your choice.

In making the discussion more dynamic, consider what genre or mix of genres the author(s) use, and argue why this may be done through discussion of those texts. Of course, discussion of time period and what is happening with American culture (through general knowledge or through the text) becomes important. And perhaps it is important to contextualize the authors you are focusing on with brief discussion of authors who came before them in literary history.

The goal is to provide an understanding to your audience (me) why a text exists within the form the author has provided to us. The best way to articulate that is to break down the content itself, who the author is, and where do these aspects all meet? What in the subject matter lends itself best to the form with which the subject matter is written in?

Reading Excerpt

Don't Let Me Be Lonley: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19005

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Let-Me-Be-Lonely/dp/1555974074#

http://www.graywolfpress.org/component/page,shop.flypage/product_id,49/category_id,0485aa93fa0558fb1f755721e776984d/option,com_phpshop/