“For there is nothing at all whimsical about such kinds of value-judgement: they have their roots in deeper structures of belief which are as apparently unshakeable as the Empire State building.”
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
My Writing Process:
- The first thing I did after receiving this assignment was to print out a hard copy of Eagleton’s article. This way, I would be able to physically highlight passages and make notes in the margins. I have found that this method of reading an article as complex as Eagleton’s is the best way to understand the material.
- After reading through the article once, I set it aside for a few hours in order to let the information sink in and to formulate questions before a second read-through. During my re-read, I read the parts I found confusing the first time a lot more carefully to make sure I understood what was going on. At the same time, I highlighted Eagleton’s main argument and the different definitions of literature he discussed throughout the article.
- Once I felt like I had a good handle on the information, I started to construct my outline. I put Eagleton’s thesis at the top of the outline and then organized the rest by the definitions he discussed in the text. I then submitted my outline for peer review. I really like that we did peer review on our outlines because it gave me a chance to make sure that I got all the information I needed out of the text by comparing my outline to my writing group’s outlines.
- During our class discussion on Eagleton’s text, I found that I had most of the key ideas I needed, but there were some aspects of his thesis that I missed. I found it really helpful that Dr. Pennington explicitly told us what the thesis was so that we didn’t write our essays entirely wrong. Having that foundation helped when I started to write my first draft.
- This first draft went a lot more smoothly than the first draft for the close reading essay, but I still struggled a bit with the evaluation part. I was worried that I didn’t have enough concrete details and that my argument wasn’t strong enough. Despite these concerns, I felt a lot more confident turning in this first draft.
- Dr. Pennington’s comments were very positive on my first draft. He said that I had an excellent first draft and that my evaluation was especially strong. I needed to add an overall thesis paragraph to the summary portion of my paper and polish a few aspects of my evaluation, but there weren’t any big ideas that needed changing.
- After my first revision, Dr. Pennington deemed my paper worthy of portfolio consideration, and there was much rejoicing!
