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(2017
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2017 #3: Web Highlights (Index) |
LITR 4328 |
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Rebecca Dyda
Correspondence highlighted through model assignments
There
were many model assignments that intrigued me, but I had a specific task in mind
for this paper. I wanted to not only look over each of these model assignments
and critique them, but I also wanted to gain a better knowledge of the term
correspondence. This term somewhat confused me in the beginning of the semester;
I understood a little, but I still had questions. I figured that looking through
each of model assignment would give me three different points of view on the
concept, and maybe one could help me understand it.
On our course site, the definition for
correspondence is a broad state or condition in which one thing agrees or
matches with another. The term seemed simple at first, but finding and
understanding how it is used in the text is the hard part. In searching for a
model assignment to help me out, I found one that explained the term very
effectively. The model assignment was by Jackie Rodriguez in 2016. She had
written her short essay on correspondence, and discussed various examples from
the text. I found her short essay to be very helpful and well written. I also
liked how she explained correspondence in
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In
her midterm she stated:
“The
term was really quite confusing to me until I saw it used in
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Irving
uses it in the most basic form, “The hour was as dismal as himself” and from
that moment it was apparent in subtler forms. For instance, I feel that the fact
that he used to entertain the women with stories of the supernatural is in a way
an invitation for the supernatural things to happen to him. In other words,
while this is a very far off application I still think it shows that I am able
to grasp the term now, the fact that he has supernatural on his mind that puts
supernatural into story perhaps he is seeing shadows or hearing noises but that
just the light or the wind? I feel like this application enriches my definition
of correspondence because it really just offers it to you at the most basic
form” (para 2)
The
first thing I loved about Jackie’s piece is that I could connect with her
because she even admits that she had struggled with the word. She also did very
well at explaining how the quote displays correspondence. Here, it seems as
though Jackie has interpreted correspondence between the attitude that Ichabod
Crane had towards the woods and the events that transpired at the end of the
story. She explains that since he viewed the woods as a scary and dark place due
to the scary stories told prior, the woods then became a scary and dark place.
This is when the term correspondence became clear to me. I also loved how Jackie
ended her piece. She explained how she was offended that she hadn’t learned the
term sooner as it seems to fit in a lot of her past readings. I have not
entirely explored this idea, but I do plan to in my future readings.
Another model assignment that helped me understand the term correspondence was
Jennifer Martin’s work from 2010. Jennifer, much like Jackie, stated that she
had also struggled with the word. This immediately made me feel at ease to know
that Jennifer had also not understood the word completely either. She used many
examples from Edgar Allan Poe’s work
Ligeia and one from Emerson’s work
Nature. My favorite example was her analysis of this quote from
Ligeia by Edgar All Poe:
“About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady Rowena was
attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which
consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of
half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of
the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy,
or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at
length convalescent—finally well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second
more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this
attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses
were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence,
defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the
increase of the chronic disease which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold
upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, I could not fall to
observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in
her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more
frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds—of the slight sounds—and of the
unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.” (para
18)
In
her analysis, Jennifer Martin discusses how throughout this passage the outer
begins to match the inner. She explains that Lady Rowena falls ill and is having
“phantasmagoric influence” while her mind believes there is an unknown phantom
that she cannot name. She concludes that this shows that the chamber and its
interior match the imagination of the feverish woman. I really liked her
interpretation of this example. It seemed to match Jackie’s example of
correspondence, so I knew that I was on the right track. Her analysis was
beautifully written and I was finally starting understand the term.
The
final model assignment I read was Dorothy Noyes’s midterm from 2012. In the
midterm she stated:
“While the authors of this period
changed what readers saw all around them, they also changed the way people
communed with their world. The idea of correspondence, which features heavily in
the Romantic literature of the American Renaissance, deals with the relationship
between the self and the outside world. In these works, the world and the
individual are in a constant state of interaction. When the authors of this
period used correspondence they opened up a whole new understanding. People were
no longer isolated inside of their own heads, their thoughts were not only
weighing on them. Correspondence made a web of what was formerly a single
string. This allowed readers to see not only outside of the character they were
reading about, but outside of themselves” (para 5)
This,
in my opinion, was beautifully worded and gets to the core of the definition. I
really loved how she connected the use of the term with the reader. She gave a
new meaning to the word, which made it out to be more than just a concept found
in Romanticism. This not only helped me understand the word, but it also made me
understand why Romantic authors use this in their works
In
conclusion, looking at each of these model assignments has given me a better
perspective on correspondence. Not only have I began to spot them more in our
readings, but I have also spotted them in some of my favorite movies and
television shows as well. I am very eager to see what other examples of
correspondence can be found in our future readings.
