Authority, History, and Everyday Mysticism in the Poetry of Lucille Clifton: A Womanist View
Please see the syllabus for detailed assignment guidelines. Choose one of the topics below and write an essay according to the guidelines in the syllabus (see page 4-5 of the syllabus for the specifics).
This assignment is due at the beginning of class on February 10, 2020.
- Though writing from the first-person perspective, Lucille Clifton in “the lost baby poem” sometimes switches from the first-person singular “I” to the first-person plural “we,” and she also deploys a number of other pronouns as she wrestles with the difficult subject matter of the text. Remembering to make an argument based on careful close reading, discuss the use of pronouns in this text. The companion essay for this topic is “Authority, History, and Everyday Mysticism in the Poetry of Lucille Clifton: A Womanist View” by Rachel Elizabeth Harding.[unique_solution]
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365688776/AONE?u=st46245&sid=AONE&xid=f1d83e0f
- There are a number of key image “networks” at play in Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: connected images of consumption, or reading or learning, of travel, among others, link some of the key elements across the text as a whole. Remembering to make an argument based on careful close reading, discuss one of these image networks and its relation to the overall “meaning” of the text. The companion essay for this topic is “Mourning and Metaphor: On the Literality of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’” by Matthew Rowlinson.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/303365?sid=primo&origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
- In addition to playing with time in terms of how she tells the story, Virginia Woolf also uses three significantly different narrators and narrative styles in To The Lighthouse. Choose one of the text’s three sections, and, remembering to make an argument based on careful close reading, discuss the role of the narrator in that section. The companion essay for this topic is “Embodied Form: Art and Life in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse” by Randi Koppen.
https://ocul-bu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_BU/6ldp3o/jstor_archive_320057663
- The sestina is a notoriously complicated genre that involves an intricate rhyming scheme and pattern of repetition. In addition to writing about some very difficult, deeply personal issues of loss, Elizabeth Bishop chooses to engage with the complexities of that genre in her poem “Sestina.” Remembering to make an argument based on careful close reading, discuss the relationship between rhyme (or another form of repetition) and what you think is the central “point” of the text. The companion essay for this topic is “Elizabeth Bishop’s stories of childhood: Writing the Disaster” by Andre Furlani.
https://ocul-bu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_BU/6ldp3o/gale_litrc83144730