Reflection on reading/interpreting strategies

Write an nearing-end-of-semester reflection on what you have learned about how to approach, read, and interpret texts, and what you have learned about strategies for reading texts from different cultures and periods. In this reflection, you should mention at least two-three specific strategies and approaches that you can take with you beyond this class; you also need examples from at least three texts where you show how you use/have used this strategy (for example, if you talk about interpreting by comparing translations, you should actually compare two translations of a selection of text; if you discuss reading aloud, you should use an example from a text where reading aloud helped you to hear something new in the text that you missed, and what it was that you noticed through reading aloud; if you mention reading for structure, you should give an example where noting a parallel helped you to notice or understand something about the text, and what it is you understood). This reflection should be at least 1000 words long

This will be due by Monday 11/30 Wednesday 12/2 (in class or, if by email, by 11:59pm). Note that this is worth ten percent of your grade.

Short paper 6: Structure II (in preparation for final project).

Structure, as we’ve said, is one of the most useful interpretive tools, but also often difficult to see if you are not used to reading for it. This can mean simple repetition, but it can also mean direct parallels being drawn (through repeated images, colors, comparisons, speech, and linguistic echoes). If a parallel is drawn we need to pay attention. We’ve done a short paper on this before: this time, I want you to attend to structure with your final project (whether an annotated edition of a text, or a creative project based on a text).

As a reminder: Parallels are not always positive; they may be highlighting differences (or, the difference may be calling our attention to a change in character, or a change in the intensity of the situation). For example, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins with Gawain in King Arthur’s court, and it ends with Gawain in King Arthur’s court, but the return to the court has a much different tone and we see the court in a different light. To do more than point out parallels, you need to think about where the passages occur. As parallels build up, they play a part in making sense of the narrative and how we are supposed to interpret it. For example, lots of objects are described as alternately “green” and “gold” in Sir Gawain: how are these objects connected, are the colors just chosen at random? And Gawain is woken by the lady of the house, while the man of the house goes out hunting, three times, but there are subtle and important shifts in each “bedroom scene” and “hunting scene.” You can consider: has the meaning of an image (or whatever the parallel is) changed based on context?

Please write a response paper of 1-2 pages on Sir Gawain or Othello, or whatever text you are using for your final project, in which you make an argument about how the text is structured (in other words, what looking at the structure allows you to see about the text’s meaning), how it deploys parallels, and to what end. The difference this time: Consider, at the end, how you could use what you observe about these structural details to create your own version of this text, or explain how you are using these details to create your own version of the text. Be sure to make an argument and use textual evidence  (this means quote the text) to support it, again showing me your annotations

This will be due by December 7 at the latest;  I’d encourage you to use some of the space to tell me about what you’re doing for your final project.