(2013 midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2013 #3: Web Highlights

LITR 4232 American Renaissance

Briana Perry

Reviewing and Learning

     In Angela Sims’ Branching Out to Something New I immediately connected with the essay because she mentioned how, “terms such as gothic, romantic, and sublime were vaguely familiar to me, but putting them in the context of literature was impossible.” I felt the same way when beginning this course, and I am sure many others do as well. She goes on to say how Romanticism is far more than a sappy movie, going on to describe what we would now classify as the Action genre. For me this was one of the big shockers of the class. If you had of asked me a week ago what it meant, I to would have said it was about love. I mean, there is “romance” right there in the word. The only thing I would have changed was the way she chose to phrase the Action/Adventure genre. I personally would have preferred to mention that historically Romanticism was a lot more adventure with a side of love interest, but still I thought it worked well.

     Sims also made me aware that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow would be considered Romantic. It is such a disturbing piece that I put Ichabod’s obsession with Katrina and the freedom her riches will bring aside. It almost feels like the story up to the point where Ichabod meets the headless horseman was just a distraction to catch the reader off guard. When a story’s final pages can make you forget everything you just read, to me, that is when the writing is most powerful.

     Make a Mountain out of a Molehill…in a Good Way, in my opinion, has a brilliant writing style. Right from the start you have the line “The American Renaissance: the name alone is rich with expectations.” This is true and well put. Renaissance means a rebirth or new beginning and with every new beginning comes great expectations. However well put this essay is I must say my favorite line was “The gothic is the part of Romanticism that digs into our psyches and finds the part that wants to be afraid.” This is what I tried to say in my own paper, but not as simply put. The gothic makes you aware of your darkest fears. Things that under normal circumstances would hold no worry will now haunt you. This could be because of a chosen color scheme throughout the story, or maybe even the distance howling of wolves. The gothic aims to make you afraid of what was once normalcy.

     In addition to the wonderful aforementioned works I also read Joe Bernard’s A Romantic romp through the (American) Renaissance. I did not like this one quite as much as the others, probably because this paper’s focus was on understanding how to make teenagers enjoy classic literature. This, of course, is just my opinion, and maybe I am now at an age where I think anything to do with teenagers is irrelevant, but I found this perspective fairly boring. To me this perspective showed a lot of stereotypes about adolescents. One of the main ones that coursed through the essay was that they somehow think reading is unimportant. I’m sure this is true for some students, but certainly not a majority. Even if these students were a majority they would not be able to escape literature anyway.

     Bernard mentions the use of popular teen romance book Twilight as a way to engage students in literature under the guidance of a teacher. I would agree to that. Classic literature finds its way into all forms of media, some bad, and others good. Twilight is certainly not the best thing that has ever been written but the main character’s love of the classic Wuthering Heights prompted many Twilight fans to read the book for themselves. When I read the book some years ago I had never even heard of Wuthering Heights, so I would agree that sometimes popular literature is a great gateway to provoke interests in classic works.

     Overall, I found each paper an interesting read. Even though I was not a fan of all of the writing styles I still felt they were each well written and researched. I am pleased with this assignment because it allowed me to read the various essays critically which greatly helped me in writing my own midterm paper.