LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2012 Student Midterm Samples 3. Web Highlights: Review at least 3 posts from course website's Model Assignments (4-6 paragraphs)

Dorothy Noyes

1.     Stepping Outside the Box

Upon reading the numerous model assignments, I found myself taking a look not only at the truly amazing content of what I was reading in comparison to my own interpretations, but also the mechanics of what these students had written. I am a rule-follower, someone who needs structure and prompts and things to be a certain way. I am surprised everyday that I love literature and its multiple meanings as much as I do, because I feel that it is a contradiction of my “Type A” personality. This assignment, this web review, had me stare right into the face of conflicting opinions, styles, and set-ups, and understand that it’s not only just okay to not follow one set of rules, but also kind of awesome.

Two of the works I compared directly to one another were the long essays of Eric Cherrie and Amber Criswell. The first thing I noticed was how different stylistically the two were. Although both students received the same prompt, the same subject matter, they approached it so differently. In his article, “The American What?” Eric makes his essay extremely personal, inviting the reader into both his family life and his own mind. His definitions are determined not by any book, but by his own experience with the text. Amber, on the other hand, takes a different approach in her article, “The Romanticism of American Renaissance Literature”. I felt when reading her essay that I was taking in an academic piece, both very informative and also emotionally detached. I learned a lot about the subject matter, but did not feel connected to the author.

Another aspect of those two specific essays that I read at length was their content. The two authors never said the exact same thing, their answers were slightly different, almost paralleled to each other, and I never disagreed with either one. I thought Eric’s comparison of American Renaissance works to mythology was brilliant, while Amber approached the same Romantic readings as a “diametrically opposing realism” which I also thought was apt and well put. Reading their works side by side, I was struck once again by the power of literature to illicit both similar and opposing viewpoints on the exact same material.

After reading Amber and Eric’s works compared to each other, I decided to look at another essay and compare it specifically to my own views and thoughts on the piece. In Brittany Fletcher’s short essay, “The Headless Boxer” she looks at Washington Irving’s  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: 

“ Why the story is so popular still remains as a question today. I became fascinated by this question and it, along with the language used, is why this story and particular passage made such an impression on me. The language and connections made from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are a few of the many reasons the headless horsemen still continues to “ride” through literature today.”

This excerpt from Brittany’s work is an example of her opinion that the language in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was imperative in its lasting influence. This really made me think, and want to pick up the story once again. Faced with something I had not considered before, I reread the work through that frame of reference, and when I was not just taking in the storyline, but the language as well, I was surprised at how much my previous opinion changed. This showed me, once again, that mine and everyone else’s views on the material are constantly shifting. Also, it illustrated the power of language; not only in Sleepy Hollow, but in that fact that Brittany’s own words in her essay caused a shift within myself.

Reading over everyone’s work, which I know they worked just as hard on as I do with everything I turn in, made such an impression on me as a sometimes rigid individual. While I learned so much, and was so impressed with the obvious talent and intelligence of the authors, it was in their differences with each other and myself that I took the most away from. I’m not here to say anyone is right or wrong; I’m simply taking away from this the beauty of the words we have been given to read this semester, and how amazing it is that we can all take from it what we need.