Professor B. Harvey

A Few Tips on Essay Writing, Research Techniques, and Grasping Literary Theory

Where good ideas come from:

--they come not from your memory of a book, poem, or story, but from your close reading and rereading

--I do not expect you to come up with something "new" from my perspective, but something "new" from your perspective.  If you don't make a discovery in the process of writing the paper, it probably will not be very satisfactory

--idea-discovery is like constructing a house (based upon observations that get built level upon level): it is not an archaeological process of finding hidden meaning

--if you worry about being profound, you will not be: you must relax a bit and let the text speak to you

--good ideas often come from small moments of interest.  Example: why must Walden Pond fish be clean, etc.? why must the pond be self-contained?

Writing your ideas into a shapely paper:

--a good thesis should unfold or, in effect, tell a story--an example:

--say that you noticed that several of Dickinson's poems are about the paradox of only knowing the object of desire when that object is not obtained or remains at a distance

--you could write an entire paper about this idea, with the development entailing the analyses of its variations in an array of poems

--or, you could ponder associated themes, to get a nice arc or trajectory in your essay

                --1st stage: paradox poems about self desiring from a distance

--2nd stage: self-reliant poems about the self turning inward, autonomously disregarding objects of desire (valves of stone image)

--3rd stage: depressed poems about affectless, dulled emotions, in which the self suffers from lack of desire

                --using I, II, III, IV as organizing tools tends to break ideas into artificial boxes

--instead use a flow chart that follows the logic of a sequence of ideas.  A flow chart is a better cognitive visual image than Roman numerals

What you should avoid:

--lapsing into celebration mode: your essay is not a general, appreciative introduction that might preface, say, an edition of "Song of Myself"

--forgetting to use quotes: these are needed to back up points and finding them can lead to discoveries on your part

--a vague title that could fit any other paper written on the same author

How not to let the prospect of research paralyze you:

--do not conduct research with the goal of getting ideas about a writer.  You must think through some issues, before you go to the library.  If you "own" an idea--or a glimmer of an idea--initially, your research will have direction and focus and you will be less likely to get lost in the morass of other scholarly perspectives

--I cannot emphasize this too much, so I'll say it again: listen to what a text says, to its complications, before you listen to what others have said about it

--research can take many forms, but it basically boils down to three venues:

--historical/cultural/biographical context or information: history can keep you from making faulty arguments and may become a key to unlocking a text's mysteries

--other specific interpretations: imagine you go into an internet "chat" room: do you blast out your opinion about a topic, or do you read the stream of previous comments to position your own against/within them? Good scholarship assumes an audience that is engaged in ongoing dialogues about authors 

--finding a theoretical framework for your insights: don't worry about being "theoretical" too much, but keep in mind that you may find it useful to think of your argument in terms of why it chooses to focus on certain things in a certain manner

How to quickly grasp theory--envision this continuum (one can, of course, combine the approaches):

--culture/historical moment in which an author lives = New Historicism, Marxist, and other forms of ideological criticism, including gender studies.  Goal is to see how the text reflects, negotiates, or critiques ideologies and material conditions of its time period (often, the "author" disappears: post-structuralism basically is about seeing texts as not author-centered)

--the author her or himself = biography or psychoanalysis (text, in essence, is symptomatic of pathology)

--the text the author writes = New Criticism (how the text means if you knew no history, no biography, etc.)

--other texts =  influence studies, but also deconstruction (similar to above, but fragmentation not unity is privileged--text undermines its own premises)

--the author's general audience then = reception theory (which might involve genre issues)

--the author's general audience now = political criticism, Jungian and other efforts to make meaning transhistorical (if class strife is the constant thru history, texts about class strife still relevant)