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(2013
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2013 #3: Web Highlights |
LITR 4232 |
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Joshua Cobb
Perusing the Online Archives
Though I don't often use the first person
perspective, especially in my academic writing, I find it the most suitable to
tackle the assignment of criticism. I find it difficult to communicate how I
feel about a written piece without first deconstructing it; taking its parts and
finding its flaws & successes. While beginning this prompt, I had little idea of
what to expect.
Whilst searching for a usable
article, I let the titles speak for themselves. The first of which caught my eye
was an essay entitlted: The American What?
What I enjoyed most was his writing style, as it
reminded me of a young Charles Bukowski; simplistic yet expressive.
I enjoyed the narrative style of the essay, setting
its scene in the home, with a narrator determined to convince his grizzly father
that his education was not in vain. It is endearing and relatable; I also am a
college student pursuing a major that is seen as less than useful by modern
standards, struggling to carve a path outside of teaching in a world of
crumbling values. The narrator related the romantic concept to that of an
American mythos, making apt examples of its Grecian counterparts. His analysis
of the romantic works as a form of mythology is clever and gives the period a
universal perspective; a genre which, like the epics of Greece, will stand the
test of time and critical opinion. This revelation in tandem with the
casual-style left me feeling informed and jovial as well as setting the bar, in
my opinion, quite high.
I clicked and scrolled
through various links, reading portions of essays until I discovered something
that I could easily remark upon. An essay,
Mother Nature through the Eyes of Emerson, had
a sort of resonance for a reason unbeknownst to me. Perhaps due to my own
inclinations toward Emerson but, nevertheless, I began reading. The author
speaks of the transcendental romanticism expressed in Emerson's piece
Nature, describing the
theme as a relationship between mother [Earth] and child [man]. While true, I
found it to be a bit oversimplified and made the author seem naïve, lacking the
powerful language that would more aptly describe the romantics relationship with
nature. Perhaps it was her weak syntax, or maybe even a limited ability to
adequately communicate the sublime nature of this theme. Yes, the romantics did
“love” nature, but not in a way that is understood in human relationships. The
romantics loved nature in the same way that the devout love their own deities;
an immovable attachment to a higher power that carries on into the eternal.
At this time, I feel as though I am grasping to find a suitable piece for discussion. The last essay was not as entertaining as the first, and the points far from sufficient. I feel as though all is lost, until I spy an article, The American Renaissance: a Time in Motion. The author displays knowledge over the material, discussing the various overlapping arcs which become romanticism: gothic, sublime, trancscendtalism, &c. He links these terms with the notion of their “sentimentality,” assuming emotion to be their common-bond, all while tracing them throughout the various works read during the semester. The essay successfully labels romanticism as a multidimensional genre which is difficult to define and even harder to understand without the proper frame-of-mind.
