Paper #4 – Placing the Text in its Cultural, Historical, Gender, or Critical Context

There are several ways to go here.

The Historical/Cultural

Interpret a text by relating it to its cultural/historical context, for example, show how “The Yellow Wallpaper” is informed by nineteenth-century notions of the rest cure for women, or how “Babylon Revisited” is informed by the crash of the stock market and 20s views on marriage. The big challenge here is turning the essay into a “report” of information rather than using the information in service to analysis. Analysis of the text should still remain the focus. How do the particularities of a culture, persimmons, green chiles, foreground cultural distances, create interesting reader/text relationships? Or, what does it say about the cultural moment that we seem to be producing more texts about monsters, such as “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls.”

Gender

Show how the gender politics and assumptions inform the work and our understanding of it in a story such as “Boys and Girls” or “A Jury of Her Peers.”

Critical/Authorial

Discuss recent critical views of a text and insert your own voice among them. See, for example, the essays on “A Rose for Emily” or “Daddy.” What do they leave out, miss?

Examples (of critics on “A Rose for Emily”):

Chronology: though the essay by Moore establishes a chronology for the story, he doesn’t really say a lot about how this chronology might affect our interpretation of the story.

Race, class, gender: While the Fetterly essay argues for the centrality of gender issues in “A Rose,” neither Fetterly nor any of the other critics say much about how Faulkner’s story deals with the issues of race and class, or how gender issues interrelate with these other issues.

Historical period: Several critics suggest that the main conflict in Faulkner’s story is between the Old South and the New South, a reading that Fetterly counters by arguing that the real conflict is between women and patriarchy. Is there a way to reconcile these two readings?

You might also try what we might call the single author/multiple text essay. Explore one of the authors we have (or will) come across in his or her own context. Read several texts by the writer along with some of their comments about their writing (such as those in our text by Flannery O’Connor) and some of the criticism.

As we begin to read more by a particular writer, we recognize patterns, concerns, subjects. We begin to recognize both their voice and their vision. To help you understand more about and become more interested in a particular writer.

1. The side-by-side” or simultaneous structure. You discuss the works simultaneously, organized by topic. For example, racism in O’Connor. The paragraph gives examples of the racism.

2. The serial, or “one-text-at-a-time” structure. You divide the paper into text-specific sections. This might work best if you want to show how a work complicates the received view of an author’s work.

3. The “lens” structure, in which a writer focuses primarily on one text, using it as a “lens” through which to view others. These texts merely provide support or amplify points about the focal text.

Getting There:

No matter which way you go, you will have to get yourself to the library. Re-read you primary list of text and begin to ask questions.

On Monday November 3 we will go to the library together. On Nov. 7, you will submit a proposal for the paper. On Friday the 14th, you will turn in at least four annotations of possible sources.

Length: about 5-7 pages double spaced.

Remember, if you miss peer review, your paper will be penalized. Your paper will also be penalized if you don’t contribute comments to other drafts.

Also, be sure to cite everything that is not your own.

Checklist for Your Draft

þ A good title, jazzy and showing your thesis idea and or focus.

þ An opening strategy that gets your readers’ attention and the essay moving in the direction that will lead to your main idea. The opening should make clear what central issue your essay addresses, creating the context or background you need.

þ Unless you will come to a “found thesis” (one you discover after exploring and analyzing available information), include a thesis statement early in the essay.

þ Clear and explicit topic sentences for your paragraphs so that they begin by nailing down the main idea or point to be explained in the paragraph. Make your essay idea centered, using topic sentences to keep ideas in focus.

þ Topic sentences act as sign posts that keep your thesis idea in focus and that point the reader in the direction you want him or her to be going.

þ Topic sentences can also be used to create transitions between the major ideas in your essay and to relate those ideas to each other and to the central idea (we often use transition devices in the first or last parts of an essay).

þ Unified paragraphs. Each paragraph should deal with one main idea. It should specify that idea in a topic sentence that is close to the beginning of the paragraph. Use transition words to keep paragraphs cohesive. Try not to end a paragraph on a quote using some one else’s words and idea. Round out your paragraphs with your own ideas and words.

þ Specific evidence to develop your thesis or idea. Use specific evidence to support all your assertions and claims.

þ Strong emphasis on your ideas in your voice. Don’t just make your piece a patchwork quilt of research in which your own voice and ideas get lost. You can paraphrase lots of your research to keep it in your voice and to integrate it fully into your own thinking and writing. You must still cite the source for paraphrased research.

þ Adequate use of experts so that you engage your reader in a conversation about your subject including what others in the field think, what contextual information is important to the conversation, and how the issue can be analyzed within that conversation.

þ Meticulous and accurate documentation of all your sources per your style guide. Be sure you give credit to other people’s ideas, phrasing, wording, even the order in which they arrange their argument. If you follow the basic lines of another scholar’s argument or thinking process, you must give credit to that scholar.

þ Good sandwiches for all quotes: lead-ins or signal phrases, explanations for why they say (if necessary).

þ A zinger of a closing strategy. The final paragraph or two should not just repeat what you have already said, but it should create a sense of “gathering together” of your ideas for one final iteration of your thesis idea or “so what.” You can suggest the importance or significance of your thesis idea if you wish, or you can call your reader to action, or you can emphasize the importance of the writer or text you have examined given your analysis of it in a particular way.