For your next response essay, reflect on the following issues

 

I.                    About your question at issue.

a.       Is it a Question at issue that you genuinely care about?

b.      Is it Question at issue for a discourse community that is in play in this class?

1.      Community of theorists, critics, and students of literature at large?

2.      Messiah Community in general?

3.      Messiah English majors?

4.      This classroom?

c.       Do you have Thesis that you can reasonably write about in approximately 500 words

                                                               i.      I don’t expect these to be fully developed arguments.  Limitations of argument, however, can also be thought of in terms of the main reason that you provide.  To help your thinking about limiting your focus you could read ahead into chapter six of Gage’s work and his ideas about using enthymemes to develop thesis statements.

 

 

II.                 Some possibilities:

a.       Respond to one of the main questions that a writer takes up, agreeing, disagreeing, extending in some fashion.

                                                               i.      Is great literature part of the process of human perfection?

                                                             ii.      Do institutional forces such as English departments or book reviewers determine what literature is?

                                                            iii.      Is literature a form of “propaganda”?

                                                           iv.      Do the great works of the Western canon privilege a white/European view of others?

                                                             v.      Do information technologies change the fundamental nature of literature?

b.      Interpret or critique a particular theorist.

                                                               i.      Does Barthes notion of the text depend upon a prior notion of the work?

                                                             ii.      Is Arnold’s understanding of culture/literature classist in nature?

                                                            iii.      Does Arnold’s understanding of culture/literature reflect nationalist concerns?

c.       Pose questions of consequence.

                                                               i.      Since definitions of literature are determined institutionally, should Messiah develop a unique understanding of English studies that speaks to the needs of our own community?

 

 

III.               Things I will especially look for in your response essay

                                                               i.      A clearly stated question at issue and a sharply focused thesis. (I will have Gage in mind as I think about this issue)

                                                             ii.      Adequate reasoning processes such as those outlined by Gage in chapter five.

                                                            iii.      Appeals to Authority, Emotion, and the Logic of the case.

                                                           iv.      Coherent paragraphs that clearly focus on the main question at issue.

                                                             v.      An effort to see your paragraphs in some kind of logical/rhetorical relationship to those that precede and follow it.

                                                           vi.      A sense that your essay is participating in the theoretical conversation that has been ongoing in class and/or is exemplified by the essays we have been discussing.