The personal response paper
Dr. Michel Aaij ENG 2530/2600 Response papers The personal response paper is to be at least two full pages, double spaced, stapled, 12 pt. Times New Roman, 1” margins. In this paper, you will respond to a text we’ve read in class and analyze that response. Mind you, this response need to go well beyond “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”–and certainly do not write something like “I believe that Oedipus was not a nice guy.” “I believe” is a statement that usually does not give any belief; usually it just masks a semianalytical statement. In fact, here’s what I want you to do. In the first paragraph, you will situate the text–discuss its paper (time and place), its author (if known; if not known, discuss), its place in (literary) history, and its possible intent. End that first paragraph with an argumentative thesis, a thesis that makes a point about your response.[unique_solution] Then, in the body, respond by evaluating your reading of the text–you may like it, you may disagree with its message while appreciating its story line, you may think certain characters are really underappreciated, you may feel that we should have read Milton in kindergarten already, etc. Argue your point, using examples from the text, from your life, from our world, whenever appropriate or necessary. What I cannot stress enough is that a response is as much about the respondent than about the text responded to. If you do not talk about yourself, if you don’t address your race, class, gender, previous education, ethnicity, you have not done your job. If you talk about ‘the reader’ in general, as if they’re all the same (typically, as if they’re all white middleedusson.comclass Americans), there is no ‘personal.’ If you produce a standard analytical paper on the text, you have not done your job. Examples? As a Protestant, I have serious problems with the gradations of suffering in Dante’s hell–but he says it so beautifully I am seduced into believing his Catholic heresies. As a woman, brought up by a single mother who severely suffered at the hands of her man, I find it difficult to sympathize with some of Marie de France’s women. Sure, it’s nice to finally see women in these texts, but too often they give in to their men all too easily. Since my father came out, now three years ago, I have come to realize that ‘gay’ is much more normal than I used to think it was, and I am glad to see that Virgil and his readers agree, as evidenced by the importance and beauty of the Nisus and Euryalus episode. Reading the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” has given me a very different insight into the Southern chivalry I was brought up to believe in: I realize now that it’s a sham. Arthur’s court in Sir Gawain is a lot like our present legislators: they laugh along with the king, but few have the guts to stand up for what they believe in. I don’t see why especially men (or boys) hail Beowulf as the greatest hero ever–being gay, and suffering under heterosexual oppression like all gay men and women in America today, I can only see him as an instrument of a repressive status quo intent on violently eradicating all difference. <<<<<<<< this is the assigment