Assignment 2: Close Reading

Literary criticism is based on a slow, careful, detailed reading of texts. For this paper, you will choose a passage of approximately 15-20 lines from either Genesis (A & B) or Beowulf, and perform a detailed analysis. Using only the words in the text, read as deeply and thoroughly as possible. Unpack the text to reveal interpretive potentials, including contradictory or unintended meanings. Pay attention to word choices, repetitions, rehtorical positioning, and the place of the passage in the larger work. The questions you're trying to answer are these: What is this passage doing? and How is this passage doing it?

The goals of this assignment are twofold: first, to give you practice doing the hard work of reading deeply into a text, seeing if there's any subtext, and thinking logically around what's present to see what's missing (all useful skills in navigating today's media-saturated news landscape, let alone the worlds of business and politics), and second, to give you an insight into the challenges those in the Middle Ages (especially in Anglo-Saxon England) would have faced with such a small selection of texts to use to determine something so large as "capital-T" Truth.

Your paper should have a thesis, making a specific point about the passage you have chosen, how it fits into the larger text, and what it reveals about that text.

Your paper should be 5-7 pages, double-spaced, with normal margins and fonts only.

This assignment is due by 11:59pm on Monday, October 28, by e-mail.

Nota Bene: I strongly encourage you to come up with a plan for your paper well ahead of time, and to talk to me about any problems you might be having. I try my best to be available whenever you need me, so if you can't make my office hours (Fridays from right after class to around 1 or so) send me an e-mail or talk to me after class and I'll make time to help in whatever way I can. (I'm not a spring chicken though, so I go to bed pretty early and may not respond to e-mails very late into the evening.)