I.                    For your next response essay, reflect on the following issues

a.      About your question at issue.

                                                               i.      Question at issue that you genuinely care about?

                                                             ii.      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?

                                                            iii.      Thesis that you can reasonably write about in approximately 500 words

1.      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.  Example,  Eliot’s idea of authorial impersonality is unsustainable because the idea of a great tradition exemplified by “great works” depends upon the idea of authors.

b.      Some possibilities:

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

1.      Is the author a sovereign?

2.      Is the idea of the author tyrannical?

3.      Does the death of the author announce the advent of the reader?

4.      Is the work of literature the expression of the poet’s personality or emotions?

5.      Is authorship as generally conceived biased towards whiteness?  Or toward maleness?

6.      Is the author the representative of a political or social group?

                                                             ii.      Interpret or critique a particular theorist.

1.      Is Eliot’s idea of impersonality self-contradictory?

2.      Does Barthes merely replace the tyranny of the author with the tyranny of the reader?

3.      Do Barthes and Foucault unjustly ignore the idea of creativity?

                                                            iii.      Pose questions of consequence.

1.      Does the death of the author require rethinking the status of reading? Or the idea of literature?

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

                                                           iv.      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.