First, pick a literary element or device that you think is important to the story/poem/play from the Literary Terms and Movements handout.

Submit a 250 word (min.) analysis of a literary work assigned this week. To do this:

• First, pick a literary element or device that you think is important to the story/poem/play from the Literary Terms and Movements handout.
• Create a thesis analyzing the importance of the term to the literary work (identify the term and text in the thesis). Ex: Literary movement X is important to writer Y’s story because…
• Analyze (rather than summarize) the text. Don’t just restate what happens; instead, make an argument about how the term is relevant to the text.

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Options for Week 2 Journals:

• Explain the Gothic or Dark Romantic characteristics in the assigned Poe or Hawthorne story.
• Write about point of view in “The Tell-tale Heart” using our conversation in the live session as a basis.
• Write about symbolism or foreshadowing in Gilman’s story.
• Write about foreshadowing OR irony in Chopin’s story using our conversation in the live session as a basis.
• Explain how the London story is an example of Naturalism (the literary movement, not simply the state of nature).
• Explain the Transcendental elements of the Thoreau or Emerson writing.
   

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Prompt One: Are you a Henry David Thoreau or a Charlotte Perkins Gilman? Consider your response to the recent culture of quarantining and social distancing and determine if your perspective is more akin to that of Thoreau’s stance in “Solitude” or Gilman’s response to solitude in her story. Use a close reading of one of the assigned readings by the authors as support for your analysis. As an added bonus, see if you can explain how the author’s outlook relates to Transcendentalism (Thoreau) or Gothicism (Gilman). If you don’t fit in either camp, email me for a variation on the prompt.

Prompt Two: Pick a prominent symbol in an assigned week 3 text and do a close reading of the text (including cited quotations) to show why the symbol is significant to the text. Do not pick a text you have written about in Discussion or the Journal.

Prompt Three: We read 2 poets this week: Whitman and Dickinson. Even though they lived and wrote in roughly the same era, they are a world apart in form (the manner in which they construct their poems) and content (the topics they write about). Which did you prefer OR which did you dislike more? If you loved or disliked both, you can go that route too. Defend your response with a close reading of EACH poet’s assigned poems to support your assertions. Use a variety of lines from various stanzas or poems to show breadth in your analysis.

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Prompt 1: Using the live session and the introductory material in our textbook, analyze the postmodern elements of Ginsberg’s poem, DeLillo’s “Airborn Toxic Event” or Morrison’s “Recitatif.” Start with a line or two that offers your own explanation of Postmodernism (based on class resources) and then apply those characteristics to a close reading of the text, incorporating cited quotes as support. Be sure to cite any outside sources you use.

Prompt 2: O’Connor’s short story is full of symbolism. It is also an example of Southern Gothic writing. Analyze one of the following symbols:

• Hulga’s leg
• Character names: pick at least 4 names and offer a close reading with support to explain why they are significant. Note that there is great irony in these names.
• A symbol of your choice

Prompt 3: Using at least one assigned reading by Tan, Lahiri or Diaz, consider what it means to be an immigrant in America. How do immigrant/ethnic characters define themselves in the American landscape? Do they assimilate and define themselves as Americans? Do they maintain a hyphenated identity? Do they face challenges or roadblocks? Do they forge an identity apart of their ethnic heritage?

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Options for Week 4 Journals:

• Consider the past 4 weeks of reading. Are there any common topics, themes or characteristics running through the examples of American literature? Write a journal entry that uses a close reading of at least 4 texts from various time periods (including cited quotes from each) to answer the following question: “What is American literature?”

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