Tim Morris
Writing Assignments for short papers #1-4
All papers are one-page maximum and due in class on the date indicated. To receive credit for the paper, you must pick it up when it's returned on the following class day.
Tues 3 Sept: #1 due: Whitman goes to great lengths to assert to his readers that he is really still here, still present in the moment when we're reading him (whenever that may be). Discuss how Whitman is either effective or ineffective in creating a sense of his immediate presence in his poems. How does he do it; what rhetorical strategies and poetic images does he use? Thurs 5 Sept: #1 turned back.
Tues 10 Sept: #2 due: There's a tremendous sense of foreboding (and even some foreshadowing) in some key early chapters of Moby-Dick (1, 26-29, and 41-42). Of course, this foreboding is supposed to work whether you do or don't know the end of the story (the whale sinks the Pequod; everyone but Ishmael dies). But Melville is mysterious in these early chapters about more than just the plot of his novel. What kinds of things -- moral, intellectual, spiritual -- lie behind the "loomings," the cast of characters, the whale and his whiteness? Thurs 12 Sept: #2 turned back.
Tues 17 Sept: #3 due: Almost every aspect of the chapters in Moby-Dick that are about the process of whaling, especially chapters 60-80 and 91-99, is explicitly "moralized" by Melville to relate to some aspect of our lives that transcends whaling. Is there a consistent philosophy in these chapters? What do we learn about Melville's (or, at least, about Ishmael's) understanding of life from these passages -- and how can you apply it to your own life? Thurs 19 Sept: #3 turned back
Tues 24 Sept: #4 due: Dickinson writes about small things -- birds, snakes, insects -- and about huge things -- death, immortality, desire. What do the small things have to do with the huge things, and how do the poems where small and huge come together work in uniting the two? Thurs 26 Sept: #4 turned back