Monday Reading:

Bennett "History"

Writing...

Bennett first summarizes four kinds of historical approaches. What are those four approaches?

But then he dismisses the first three. Why? What's different about the fourth approach?

What does he mean by "mediation"?

What does he mean when he says that we need to investigate "rhetorical strategies and discursive conventions"?

Wednesday/Friday

We will spend our time practicing situating a text.

Essay #7: Situate a Text

Importantly, we no longer ask, "What does this text mean?" Instead, we ask, "How does (or did) this text function?" This is probably the most important shift in the last 40 years of literary analysis.

As noted above and by Bennett, your job is to first "situate" a text within a specific historical context which means a specific place and time.

Then, assume that texts are shaping forces. They encourage us to adopt certain identities, and they valorize or devalorize (celebrate or mock) specific actions, values, and attitudes. Texts are never neutral; they always (knowingly or not) have a point of view that they propagate. Again, we don't ask, "What does the text mean?" We ask instead, "What does a text do?" Therefore, discuss the text in terms of what it celebrates, reinforces, subverts, encourages, attacks, glorifies, valorizes, devalorizes, challenges, undermines, critiques. Use those verbs!

Or to follow Bennett, we "might try to situate this poem in relation to other contemporary discourses" and then "investigate the rhetorical strategies and discursive conventions" (119). We don't "produce a thematic reading" but instead we "consider how the rhetorical strategies" work in the text. In other words, identify what the text does, then explain how it does what it does.

Select me. I explain the structure and moves.pdf

Select me, too. I offer several professional examples of key moves.pdf