English 1406.A0 – Reading and Writing Critically
First Paper: Due Wed. October 12
Length: short. As long as it needs to be, and no longer.
All assignments are due, on paper, delivered in person, at the beginning of class. Late Papers will be penalized 15% per class day for one week, after which the paper will not be accepted. Acadia professors have the right to fail any student who does not submit for grade every graded assignment or exam over the course of the year.
Format:
Do NOT have a title page.
But DO have a title, and put your title at the top of page 1, with your name, single spaced, on the next line beneath it. Center these two lines. Then have two or three line spaces below your name before you start your text. The rest of your text should be double spaced.
Give your paper a title that communicates your thesis. A reader should be able to look at the title and understand what the paper is about. E.g. The Irony of kindness in Wyatt’s “The flee from me . . .” or The Importance of the Rhyme Scheme in Ralegh’s Answer to Marlowe’s “Passionate Shepherd”.
Your title should NOT be boldfaced, huge, italicized, underlined, or "enclosed within quotation marks." Your title should be plain text, the same font as the rest of your paper, and at most a standard size larger, e.g. Title size 14 pts, and body text 12 pts.
Familiarize yourself with the Modern Language Association (MLA) style as it is presented on pp. 567 – 616 of the Broadview Guide to Writing. Use this style wherever applicable in your paper.
Do NOT allow extra space between paragraphs.
Indent paragraphs.
Print your work onto paper for submission AT THE START OF CLASS ON THE DAY IT IS DUE.
Before you submit your paper, you or a friend should read it—on paper—and make all necessary corrections. Mistakes born of ignorance will be forgiven; mistakes born of laziness will not. For example, if you write “affect” when you should have written “effect,” that is likely to be a mistake caused by your ignorance of which is the right word to use in that context. But if you misread Ralegh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” because you don’t know what a nymph is, that is a mistake caused by your failure to use the Oxford English Dictionary to find out what “nymph” means.
Double check, and triple check if need be, your spelling. I think the best way to do that is in the word processing software in which you write your paper. MSWord, for example, puts a red squiggly line under misspelled words. But do not fail to read your work, or have a friend do so, on paper, too. Software won’t find a spelling mistake if you write “There house burned down.” but a human reader should, and usually will. For whatever reason, we tend to spot such errors on paper more reliably than we do on screen.
Every mistake you could have caught through careful proofreading will earn the comment of "proofread" on your paper. When there are three such comments I will stop reading, and award a grade of 40%.
Staple your pages together. This is a requirement. Do not show up in class and ask the professor if he has a stapler with him. He doesn’t; he won’t have.
For any sonnet used to fulfill this assignment, treat the first line as though it is the title.
Do NOT take the lazy route for the representation of anything except the abbreviation for “lines,” which is “ll.” In other words, for the purposes of this paper, MLA would be represented as Modern Language Association, the Thomas Wyatt poem on p. 486 of the course text would be written as “They flee from me that sometime did me seek” not as “The flee from me” (which is how you would be more likely to represent that poem in any other context). Type out “do not,” “can not,” and “will not” rather than “don’t,” “can’t,” or “won’t,” et cetera.
Feel free to—in fact be sure to—mark any errors you see on your paper before submitting it if you don’t have time to print off another copy, or if it is some small error that does not warrant re-printing the entire paper. E.g. suppose you notice that you typed “if” where you meant to type “it”. Simply cross out the “f” and handprint or write clearly a “t” above it. You will be far better served to do that, than to risk being late to class the day your paper is due.
The professor reads a great many student papers during the course of any given year, and can automatically pick up on the use of margins that are too wide or too narrow, and fonts that reproduce text in larger or smaller than typical sizes. So just don’t. Use a standard font, and set your margins somewhere between 2 and 2.5cm for all four edges (i.e. top, bottom, and sides).
Be sure to number all pages of your essay, after page one. In other words, be sure to number all pages of your essay from page two forward. Put the number in the upper right corner of the page. This can be done automatically using any contemporary word processing software (e.g. MSWord, Pages, Open Office or Libre Office). If you don’t know how to do it, ask in class. If no one asks, you will not be forgiven for not having done this for your paper—and no, handwritten page numbers will not ordinarily be accepted.
Yes, you can use the first person pronoun.
Random thoughts about what to watch out for:
"Than" is a comparative term, as in “The football player is tougher than the professor.” “Then” is a temporal term, which is to say a term concerned with time, as in “She went to the beer store, then she went to the party.” Don’t confuse them. Such confusion is often a simple spelling mistake, but it gives your reader the impression you are either not smart enough or not intelligent enough to know the difference.
"Quotation" is a noun. “Quote” is a verb. That means that a person with an education knows to write “the following quotation from the poem will show . . .” and “when I quote from the poem I will show . . .” and not “as the following quote will show . . .” Learn to wow people by learning how to spot the people whose use of “quote” comes more from listening to TV than from reading printed texts.
You can have a look at this Sample paper to give yourself a sense of what your paper should look like.
Assignment:
Assume you are writing a paper to be read by any one of your classmates. You will be given a choice of six sonnets, from which you are to pick one to read closely. Think of your ideal reader as a classmate who has chosen a different sonnet, so s/he has not devoted as much time and thought to “your” sonnet as you have. S/he has been shown how to read poetry carefully, how to think about the rhythm, metre, word choice: how to look for images, symbols, similes, metaphor, ambiguity, etc. But s/he needs your help to call attention to these features and the meaning to which they lead you because s/he has been spending her time on a poem other than the one you have read closely.
Sometime after class on Wednesday, September 28 the professor will enable you to see the six sonnets below. You are required to do a close reading of one—only one—of those sonnets. On Friday, September 30 you will have an opportunity in class to ask whatever questions you want to ask about any of these sonnets. After that class, you will not have a chance to interact with the professor—even by email—until the paper is due, at the beginning of class, on Wednesday, October 12.
I will provide a fifty year time span within which each sonnet was written for the sake of consulting the OED.
For this assignment ONLY, no list of references or Works Cited is required, not even the OED (which would normally be cited if it played as big a role in your work as it bloody well ought to for this assignment.
What you need for this assignment:
The sonnet you choose
The Oxford English Dictionary
Your thoughtful self
How you can fail:
Don’t get the paper in on time
Don’t proofread it carefully
Include in the paper anything specific that comes from outside the poem or the OED
Sonnets:
Me let the world disparage and despise -
As one unfettered with its gilded chains,
As one untempted by its sordid gains,
Its pleasant vice, its profitable lies;
Let Justice, blind and halt and maimed, chastise
The rebel spirit surging in my veins,
Let the Law deal me penalties and pains
And make me hideous in my neighbours' eyes.
But let me fall not in mine own esteem,
By poor deceit or selfish greed debased.
Let me be clean from secret stain and shame,
Know myself true, though false as hell I seem -
Know myself worthy, howsoe'er disgraced -
Know myself right, though every tongue should blame.
1875 - 1925
Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near!
No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay!
Like melting fog the mirage melts away
In all-surrounding darkness, void and clear.
Drifting, I spread vain hands, and vainly peer
And vainly call for pilot, - weep and pray;
Beyond these limits not the faintest ray
Shows distant coast whereto the lost may steer.
O what is life, if we must hold it thus
As wind-blown sparks hold momentary fire?
What are these gifts without the larger boon?
O what is art, or wealth, or fame to us
Who scarce have time to know what we desire?
O what is love, if we must part so soon?
1875 - 1925
Beauty, sweet love, is like the morning dew,
Whose short refresh upon the tender green
Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth shew,
And straight 'tis gone as it had never been.
Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish,
Short is the glory of the blushing rose;
The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish,
Yet which at length thou must be forced to lose,
When thou, surcharged with the burthen of thy years,
Shalt bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth,
And that in beauty's lease expired appears
The date of age, the kalends of our death.
But ah! no more, this must not be foretold,
For women grieve to think they must be old.
1575 - 1625
"Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?"
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour my self I can sustain;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.
1600 - 1650
The Soote Season
The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flyes smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings,
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
1525 - 1575
When night's black mantle could most darkness prove,
And sleep (death's image) did my senses hire
From knowledge of myself, then thoughts did move
Swifter than those, most switness need require.
In sleep, a chariot drawn by wing'd Desire,
I saw, where sate bright Venus, Queen of love,
And at her feet her son, still adding fire
To burning hearts, which she did hold above.
But one heart flaming more than all the rest,
The goddess held, and put it to my breast.
Dear Son, now shoot, she said, this must we win.
He her obeyed, and martyr'd my poor heart.
I waking hop'd as dreams it would depart,
Yet since, O me, a lover have I been.
1585 - 1635