ENLT 371Literature and the Environment



LIT 373 LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT Microtheme 2Due Friday, November 4 (flexible), by email (Subject Line: 373 Your Last Name Microtheme 2)(plus electronic rough drafts emailed as a separate attachment, including Writer’s Checklist and 2 Peer Editing Responses; or hard copies) Overview Write a concise but thorough two-to-three-page essay. It should build on a thesis statement offering close textual analysis through paragraphs explicating direct quotations from the text(s). Consider how the voices in Unit 2 speak about issues of the “nature-culture dichotomy” in literature and language. Check the two dozen suggested topics below. Discuss issues in our readings from either Abram, Snyder, or Kerouac, or a combination, in light of any of the ecocritical essays we’ve read so far this semester (Emerson, Thoreau, LeGuin, Meeker, Selby, Kolodny, etc.). How does the narrative or poem play with or against categories of nature or culture? Comparison/contrasts combining more than one author are welcome. Consult the writer’s checklist and the peer editing forms, which are on my website, plus the handouts on thesis development, and see thesis guidelines below. Theme & Focus Our introduction to ecocritical definitions and issues in the course offers recurring questions specifically around Turner’s and Clifford’s articulations of very different ways to look at links between nature and culture: as 1) a binary via the “frontier thesis” of oppositional constructs between civilization and wilderness among related power constructs of race, class, and gender; or as 2) a web of relations, a system of exchange with multiple centers of power. For your specific focus, follow your own interest as you consider the topics below and any of the discussion questions. Structure Try for a well-structured essay, with 1) an intro paragraph that sets up a context for the one-sentence thesis statement typed in bold toward the end of the paragraph (= deductive structure; or if you want to try inductive structure, put the bold-font thesis statement in the final paragraph); 2) a set of body paragraphs that explain and give examples, drawing on textual citations, to support the thesis; and 3) a short concluding paragraph that does more than repeat the intro, suggesting other directions or implications of the thesis (which would first show up here in the inductive approach). This clear structure does not mean that the prose has to be stiff. Be as lively or wacky as you want, as well as rigorous in your critical thinking. There is room in literary criticism for personal response as well as critical analysis. Required -- Write a short self-evaluation at the end of the electronic paper file (after the Works Cited): how did your writing process go; what do you feel are the paper’s strengths and weaknesses; and what might you change about the paper if you only had the time? Logistics I will edit, grade, and respond to your paper online. NB: be sure to put the exact spelling of this heading, 373 Your Last Name Microtheme 2, as your email’s subject line. Because of the overload in my inbox, I cannot guarantee that you will get credit for your online work unless you make this your subject line. To read my editing responses, be sure to view my Word.doc attachment of your edited paper in Print Layout by clicking that option under the View Menu. If you are having trouble with the electronic aspects of this assignment—or any other aspects—please talk with me. Refer to the guidelines handout for writing and grading criteria. Look for specific passages that reflect your larger ideas, and quote those passages as you develop your thesis. (Thus in-text citations and a Works Cited are required.) Remember to use oodles of citations from the texts, shaped by your commentary. See Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual for proper MLA in-text citation and bibliographic form, or you are welcome to use the standard format from another discipline of your major (e.g., social sciences or physical sciences), as long as you are consistent. (See the Diana Hacker MLA guide in the bookstore under ENLT 000.) Format The essay should be double-spaced, with one-inch margins, in type of no less than 10pt. An optional cover page with your name, the course, the date, and the assignment is ok (to add space to the essay pages). Include an original title. Again, the essay should include short, direct quotations from the texts to support your thesis. Plenty of quotations are welcome toward close reading. Use MLA format for in-text citations. A final page should include a Works Cited, also in exact MLA format. The paper will be graded on form and content, with an average of the two. Form includes clarity and style, grammar and spelling, bibliographic format, other mechanics of the presentation, plus paragraph topic sentences, transitions, and paragraph coherence and development. Content includes a single-sentence, arguable thesis focusing, again, on textual analysis with supporting logic and examples, plus range and depth of argument, originality, complexity, and awareness of opposing views. In any writing task, all the elements are immediately in play, so they all count, though I will give you feedback where your needs are greatest. Be sure to go over and hand in the Writer’s Checklist, be sure to proofread and/or get help with proofreading, and please read carefully through the following more detailed guidelines. More thesis statement guidelines (+ see handouts): Whether you start or end with these three key steps to building a thesis, be sure you do them as part of this short-essay exercise: 1) narrow the topic, 2) make a clear assertion about it, and 3) briefly preview or outline the discussion. Note that a thesis is more focused than a topic as it explains what you think about the topic. A thesis assertion in literary analysis does more than describe: it analyzes a textual dynamic. It shows not only what, but how, why, or so what about a topic as it works in the text. Check the draft thesis by asking at least two questions: “is it focused on textual analysis” and “is it debatable?” i.e., if the debatable opposite or negation of the thesis is a non-issue, then the thesis probably needs to assert a more specific analysis that would be arguable. So be careful not to just summarize the piece of literature. Instead explain to a fellow student—who has read this chosen fiction or poetry—some aspect of how it works. To be sure that your thesis is built on an analytical assertion, rather than on descriptive summary, your essay should go beyond a book report into a process of separating out parts and then putting them back together, that is, showing how some of those parts work dynamically to make one aspect of the story work. That’s analysis. A further stylistic and structural boost often develops if your thesis explicitly lists and also labels those parts, steps, categories, or features that you are analyzing. Another way to say this is do the work for the reader. Spell it out. Keep a textual focus for literary analysis in order to detail how, why, and/or so what? Look for specific passages that reflect and stimulate your larger ideas, and quote those passages as you develop your thesis. (Again a Works Cited is required.) Feel free to write both critical analysis and personal response, to be autobiographical, to discuss the reader as well as the text – as long as you tie the discussion closely and critically to textual passages. Remember to draw on plenty of citations from the texts, shaped by your commentary. TopicsNote that topics below are only suggestions. You can search into any one of them, or find your own for a focus that matters most to you. In addition, you may build from the discussion question handouts any topic that relates to ways that these voices offer examples of or exceptions to the colonial binary and the nexus as options for historical relations. In each of the questions below, it is possible to look for binary oppositions versus systems of exchange and interactions, as lenses by which to read specific texts. Address your paper to a modern student reader who has read the work(s) and who may be confused about binary oppositions or other issues in the text. In this short of a space, and assuming that your reader has read the piece, you don’t need to summarize it. Only use aspects of the text(s) as examples of your analysis. Customize any question below into a topic to fit your special interests. Strive for close reading of particular textual passages, expanding from quoted lines to elucidate larger themes, addressing context through text, content through form. You don’t have to answer all parts of a question. If you like, you can shape any question as a comparison/contrast between two writers. Consider also the discussion question handouts as sources for topics. 1. Considering any aspect of the definitions and issues we’ve put forward so far for “ecocriticism” from Glotfelty, White, or class discussion, compare the approach of Snyder or Kerouac to a specific issue or symbol, such as class relations (loggers) or gender relations (Princess). Where in our readings do you see any of the historical resonances that White described? How does Glotfelty’s sense of “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” help to focus your reading of Snyder and/or Kerouac? How does focusing on the relationship between nature and culture in the text help get at the meaning or dynamics in these writers? 2. Take a key idea from Abram or one of the essay handouts and apply it to one of the other readings in the unit, e.g., how does Kolodny’s perspective on gender projections onto the land relate to Kerouac’s representations of Japhy and Ray in the mountains? In relation to women? & what are the implications of such comparisons for understanding the text? For acting on the author’s messages? Or how does Abram’s notion of the physical basis of language affect Snyder’s diction and imagery on the page? Or how does Abram’s notion of reciprocal, participatory perception relate to Kerouac’s efforts to push the boundaries of language? To Snyder’s imagery? 3. Explore gender relations in The Dharma Bums around yabyum (31). Does Princess achieve power and equality? Are the men exploiting her for their sexual gratification under the guise of Zen freedom? Are there differences between the ways Japhy and Ray relate to her? Is she exploiting them? Or is she a Bodhisattva bestowing on them the power of universal love to heal their suffering? Is this intimate area an ultimate testing ground for the possibility or impossibility of cross-cultural ecozen? Are there ways to conceive of sexuality in the lives of these specific characters that could actually fulfill the ritual value of “Zen Free Love Lunacy” (30)? Is LeGuin’s “Carrier-Bag Theory” relevant here? Does Princess’s embrace resolve the men’s dominating tendencies in spite of themselves? 4. How does Abram’s sense of an animate world relate to the dynamics of perception and expression in a passage of Snyder and/or Kerouac? Or what about Abram’s sense of language in reading itself as an animistic dynamic? “As nonhuman animals, plants, and even ‘inanimate’ rivers once spoke to our tribal ancestors, so the ‘inert’ letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless—as mysterious as a talking stone” (131). Where can we see this “form of animism” in reading Snyder’s or Kerouac’s text? 5. Using several key examples, discuss the imagery used by authors from this Unit to characterize a specific theme in American approaches to the environment. What do those images imply about the possibilities of cultural exchange between binary and nexus options? 6. Construct an argument to summarize one or two key themes among the writers in this unit – do they or do they not share key themes? Or argue that they do not share themes. Then contrast/compare those thematic situations among different voices. Show how those larger issues move through specific lines of their texts? What significance does such a comparison/contrast hold for questions of American environmentalism? 7. Choosing one or more passages of Snyder or Kerouac, discuss how the voice relates to a nexus paradigm of personal identity? or does it reinforce separate, alienated identity? Separations or blendings of nature and culture? 8. How does the theme, from James Clifford, of “the Puritan taboo on mixing beliefs and bodies” play into the character or plot issues in your chosen text(s)? How is it that individual identities mix or resist mixing in a poem or story? 9. Consider any one or more of our Unit 2 readings in terms of the fundamental postcolonial question of how can cultures co-exist across race, gender, or class boundaries. How does this poem or prose envision possible responses to that question between Westerners and practitioners of Japanese Zen culture, or between urban and rural classes or between men and women? (Comparison/contrast between two pieces welcome here as well.) Considering our class lectures and discussions of comic structure as pragmatic survival and adaptation versus tragic structure as noble death and destruction—with catharsis for the audience—what are the literary approaches that this novel or poem takes to the larger question of plurality versus domination and assimilation? What ray of hope might show through the struggle? Is it hopeless? 10. Consider the basic “rugged individual” stereotype of the Myth of the West and trace how your chosen text, in Snyder and/or Kerouac, reinforces or critiques such a model of human behavior. In terms of the purposes of the text, why is this approach significant, and so what? 11. Consider the role of the land and environment in your chosen text. How does the narration characterize the environment? How central is it to the meanings of the work? How so? Why? So what? How possible is it to build character and community on this land? 12. Chart the stages (process analysis) you as a reader went through in reading any one of these works in Unit 2, perhaps in relation to the effects of the unique language use, or in your relation to the specific unfolding of a character or a relationship in the story or poem, and explain how that process relates to the writer’s purposes. 13. There are some moments of violence, either direct or indirect, either personal or political, individual or structural, in these readings. Choose one or more such scenes and explore whether those moments includes different types of violence, difference purposes for violence, or whether it’s all the same violence at the root. If different or the same, what does your analysis of violence in the text say about themes of cultural, racial, or gender conflict?14. Consider the power of religion in these texts. How do religious ideas (for instance, mystery, deity, spirituality, doctrine, discipline, life after death?) help to shape the plot, characters, themes, symbols, or etc.? What is the relation, the links and equations or distinctions between nature and god in the story(ies) or poem(s). 15. Consider the gender dynamics of these stories or poems. How are plot outcomes shaped by gendered characterizations? Are masculine and feminine qualities in balance or out of balance in the story and/or the characters? Specify the issue(s) and discuss how the voices in the text work through gender roles. 16. Consider the urban/ rural tensions as they relate to choices that the characters make.17. Consider the attractiveness of the “outlaw” in American literature, and discuss how and why the outlaw functions in one or more of these narratives. & then so what? If mainstream American culture has always glorified outlaws (e.g., the Boston Tea Party’s “Mohawks,” Jesse James, Al Capone, Bonny & Clyde, “Natural-Born Killers”), what about outlaws in the work? How are they treated differently or similarly to mainstream treatments, and what do those similarities or differences say about the writer’s purposes? Kerouac’s “bums”? 18. Consider the individual vs. group values of particular individuals in these cultures and compare how their choices around those values affect the themes of the story or poem. 19. Can you break a particular set of characters or narrative lines into a question of good and evil, or into some other mythic binary—civilization and wilderness, right and wrong? If so, how does that play out in the story? If not, what does it say about grey areas, about mixing the two? 20. What are the dynamics of race as they work through the particular narrative options for particular characters? 22. What are the specific assumptions in any of our authors about the ways that nature “teaches” us things we need to know? What do those assumptions say about their view of the nature/culture dynamic, and what are some social or ecological ramifications of those views? 23. Explore a specific symbol in one or two of these texts and discuss how it generates meaning. 24. Using several key examples, discuss the imagery used by two or more authors from this unit to characterize a specific theme in approaches to the environment. What do those images imply about the possibilities of cultural exchange between binary and nexus options? Between nature and culture? Between “civilization” and “wilderness”?& again, consider any of the discussion questions on the handouts for starting points as well. Extra credit (append to electronic essay file; send in same file as final draft): In no more than two pages, discuss a conflict-resolution approach to a contemporary environmental issue that is close to your heart. Consider how a systems approach, rather than either/or thinking, might address social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the issue as well as biological ones. ................
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