ACADEMIC
WRITING
Jeffrey R. Wilson
Academic Writing
“Writing” is usually understood as the expression of thought. This book
redefines “writing” as the thought process itself. Writing is not what you
do with thought. Writing is thinking.
Better living through interpretation: that’s the promise of academic
writing, which is a foundational course in most schools because it’s a
foundational skill in life. Our world is full of things that need to be
questioned, from ancient myths and historical events to current politics
and the weird details of everyday life.
Based on his courses in the Writing Program at Harvard University,
Jeffrey R. Wilson’s Academic Writing is a no-nonsense guide to the long
and complex writing process. Packed with concrete examples, helpful
visuals, and practical tips, the book is an essential guide for academic
writing at the highest level. Empowering writers to be creators—not just
consumers—of knowledge, Wilson shows how to develop perspective, ask
questions, build ideas, and craft arguments that reveal new truths that the
world needs to hear. Writers learn different strategies for articulating the
implications of an argument—why it matters—and putting ideas in
conversation with others by finding, reading, and incorporating
scholarship. There are models for different ways to organize an essay and
tips to make sentences snap with style. Emphasis is placed on developing
ideas in constant conversation with others and on strengthening papers
through multiple rounds of revision.
Jeffrey R. Wilson is a teacher-scholar at Harvard University. He is the
author of three books: Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to
Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History (2022), Shakespeare and
Game of Thrones (2021), and Shakespeare and Trump (2020). As an
Instructional Design Lead in the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances
in Learning, he creates courses and events for Harvard Online. From 2014-
22, he taught the “Why Shakespeare?” course in the Harvard College
Writing Program. He has taught in the Departments of English and
Religious Studies at University of California, Irvine; in the Department of
Criminal Justice at California State University, Long Beach; and in the
Museum Studies Program at the Harvard Extension School. His writing
has appeared in journals such as Modern Language Quarterly, Genre, and
College Literature, and his research has been featured on CNN, MSNBC,
NPR, and New York Times. On Twitter @DrJeffreyWilson.
Academic Writing
Jeffrey R. Wilson
Published in draft 2022.
© 2022 Jeffrey R. Wilson
The right of Jeffrey R. Wilson to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
This book is being made available in draft form. Readers are warmly invited to
make suggestions for revision.
Contents
Acknowledgments
One
Academic Writing
1. Academic Writing .................................................................... 2
2. Academic Integrity ................................................................... 5
3. Writing Across the Curriculum ............................................... 6
4. The Elements of Academic Writing ....................................... 9
5. The Kinds of Academic Writing ............................................ 12
6. The Writing Process ................................................................ 16
Two
Theory
7. Textuality .................................................................................. 22
8. The Humanities ........................................................................ 25
9. Rhetoric ..................................................................................... 27
10. Interpretation ........................................................................... 30
Three
Interpretation
11. Close Reading ........................................................................... 34
12. Perspective ................................................................................ 36
13. Questions and Problems ......................................................... 40
14. Texts .......................................................................................... 47
15. Sources ...................................................................................... 52
16. Orientation ............................................................................... 56
17. Evidence ................................................................................... 59
18. Quotation .................................................................................. 68
19. Analysis ..................................................................................... 74
Four
Argument
20. Method ...................................................................................... 87
21. Terms ........................................................................................ 92
22. Logic .......................................................................................... 101
23. Argument .................................................................................. 103
24. Counters and Responses ......................................................... 110
25. Thesis ........................................................................................ 115
26. Stakes ......................................................................................... 126
27. Implications .............................................................................. 132
28. Mobile Composing .................................................................. 142
Five
Research
29. Academic Research .................................................................. 147
30. Evaluating Scholarship ............................................................ 151
31. Forms of Scholarship .............................................................. 154
32. Finding Scholarship ................................................................. 155
33. Reference Works ...................................................................... 160
34. Accessing Scholarship ............................................................. 161
35. Citation ...................................................................................... 163
36. Annotated Bibliographies ........................................................ 167
37. Plagiarism .................................................................................. 172
38. Literature Reviews ................................................................... 176
Six
Structure
39. Organization ............................................................................. 184
40. Outlines ..................................................................................... 186
41. Introductions ............................................................................ 193
42. The Q&A ........................................................................... 198
43. The Surface Reading / Closer Reading .......................... 204
44. The New Phenomenon .................................................... 206
45. The Abstract ...................................................................... 208
46. The Exemplar .................................................................... 209
47. The Cannonball ................................................................. 223
48. The Stakes First ................................................................. 214
49. The Comparative Essay ................................................... 216
50. The Lens Essay ................................................................. 218
51. The Test-a-Theory Essay ................................................. 220
52. The Historicist Essay ........................................................ 222
53. Bodies ........................................................................................ 224
54. Assertions ................................................................................. 226
55. Body Sections ........................................................................... 229
56. Conclusions .............................................................................. 236
57. Empirical Papers ...................................................................... 239
Seven
Language
58. Academic Language ................................................................. 248
59. Editing ....................................................................................... 250
60. Grammar ................................................................................... 253
61. Punctuation ............................................................................... 255
62. Concision .................................................................................. 260
63. Clarity ........................................................................................ 262
64. Style ........................................................................................... 265
Eight
Publication
65. Titles .......................................................................................... 275
66. Abstracts ................................................................................... 278
67. Revision .................................................................................... 282
68. Comments ................................................................................ 289
69. Conferences .............................................................................. 293
70. Workshop ................................................................................. 296
71. Presentations ............................................................................ 299
72. Academic Publication .............................................................. 305
73. Public Writing ........................................................................... 309
Appendix
I. The Elements of Academic Writing in Action
The Hamlet Syndrome .................................................................. 315
II. Sample Papers
In Defense of Polonius .................................................................. 323
What the Viral Game Among Us Reveals
About How Groups Fall Apart ................................................... 333
How COVID Will Make Us Stronger:
Twelve Students from Around the World
on the Virus and the Future ......................................................... 343
Acknowledgements
This book is a no-nonsense guide to the academic writing process—no fluff
and no frills. It’s not about grammar, punctuation, MLA Style, or personal
essays—not that kind of writing. It’s a how-to manual for high-quality
arguments.
There are four main components:
– Chapters: Each provides guidance, not rules, because there are always
exceptions to the rules in academic writing.
– Practicums: These boxes give step-by-step instructions to help you
build ideas and write papers.
– The Writing Process: These features show all the steps taken to write a
paper, allowing you to follow it from initial idea to published article.
– Into the Essay: Excerpts from actual papers show the ideas from the
chapters in action because you learn to write best by getting
examples rather than instructions.
Much of my approach to academic writing developed during my time in the
Harvard College Writing Program. I am especially grateful to Tom Jehn,
Karen Heath, Jane Rosensweig, Pat Bellanca, Jonah Johnson, Jim Herron,
and Gordon Harvey, the originator of the Elements of Academic Writing. I
refined this approach while teaching writing courses in museum studies at the
Harvard Extension School (Katherine Burton Jones), in criminal justice at
CSU Long Beach (thanks to Hank Fradella), and in disability studies at UC
Irvine (thanks to Jonathan Alexander, Daniel Gross, Lynda Haas, Julia
Reinhard Lupton, Tira Palmquist, and Victoria Silver), as well as courses for
middle- and high-school students at Phillips Academy Andover (thanks Beth
Friedman and Erin McCloskey).
The Into the Essay examples come from papers on Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
I’m a Shakespeare nut, and one key to good writing is to write about what
you care about. You don’t need to know or like Hamlet to benefit from these
examples, which provide models for your own passions and papers.
In my writing classes, every time I asked students to write an essay on Hamlet,
I wrote one myself—to get a sense of the steps they were going through and
to provide examples of writing in action. These essays aimed to be more
rigorous than the puff pieces in mainstream media yet more accessible than
the scholarship in academic journals—precisely the kind of writing students
often do.
First came “’It Started Like a Guilty Thing’: The Beginning of Hamlet and the
Beginning of Modern Politics’ in the political magazine CounterPunch in 2015.
Next was “What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to
College" for Academe. I teamed with criminologist Hank Fradella to theorize
“The Hamlet Syndrome” in the journal Law, Culture, and the Humanities.
"Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of Aeneas's
Tale to Dido" appeared at the 2016 British Shakespeare Association
Conference in Hull.
2017 brought “‘To be, or not to be’: Shakespeare Against Philosophy” in the
journal Shakespeare. In 2018, I wrote “As a stranger give it welcome”:
Shakespeare's Advice for First-Year College Students” for Change: The
Magazine of Higher Learning.
Four essays appeared in 2019. First was "Horatio as Author: Storytelling and
Stoic Tragedy” in the collection Hamlet and Emotions. “Tragic
Foundationalism” appeared in Mosaic. An essay humbly titled “The Meaning
of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet” appeared in ANQ. And "Tragic Excess in
Hamlet” appeared in Literary Imagination. In 2019, I also presented “Ophelia’s
Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of Music in Hamlet”
at the European Shakespeare Research Association Conference in Rome.
In 2020, “The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social
Determinism” appeared in Midwest Quarterly. “Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s
Time to Teach it Like One” appeared in Zocalo Public Square. “What’s Love
Got to Do with Hamlet?” appeared in Shakespeare Magazine.
In early corona-times, I couldn’t write anything, so I dove into some reading.
Out came the first truly historicist thing I’d written in a long time, which is
also deeply personal: “Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet” in English Language Notes. Father’s Day 2022 also
brought an essay called “In Defense of Polonius” for JSTOR Daily—which
is the article tracked from initial idea to published piece in The Writing Process
segments of this book.
I am grateful to students, colleagues, editors, readers, audiences, and
interlocutors for comments and conversations about these ideas.
One
Academic Writing
2
1
Academic Writing
Better living through interpretation: that’s the promise of academic writing, which
is one of the foundational courses in most schools and colleges because it’s
one of the foundational skills in life. Our world is full of things that need to
be questioned, from ancient myths and historical events to current politics
and the weird details of everyday life.
Interpreting things makes us happy. Humans love to discover and debate
meanings. What did Maria mean when she said I “looked good today”? Why
is every movie now a remake, reboot, sequel, or prequel? What’s up with this
Vladimir Putin guy? The human brain hates when it’s confused, when there’s
something complex that it doesn’t understand, whether it’s a strange story
like Shakespeare’s Hamlet or the reason America loves guns. Interpretation
offers pathways to understanding, and knowledge is power over confusion.
Writing is also practical. Regardless of the direction you see your life going,
you’ll be writing your way there. Let’s say you want to cure cancer. You don’t
need to know how to write, you say to yourself. You just need to know the
science of abnormal cell growth. You enroll in all the science courses you
can—math, physics, statistics, cellular biology, organic chemistry. You ace
your classes, graduate with honors, slaughter the MCAT, and enroll in the
top molecular biology graduate program in the country, where you conduct
groundbreaking research with leaders in the field. You get your Ph.D., and
you’re ready to open your own lab. That takes money, so you’ve got to write
a funding application. Then you’ve got to be able to write up your research
in academic articles that can be published to the scientific community that
needs to know about your work. You’ve got to be able to write.
Academic Writing
3
The Pillars of Academic Writing
Academic writing is built upon three truths that aren’t self-evident:
– Writing is Thinking: While “writing” is traditionally understood as the
expression of thought, we’ll redefine “writing” as the thought
process itself. Writing is not what you do with thought. Writing is
thinking.
– Writing is a Process: Both the interpretation that forms the basis of an
argument and the presentation of that argument in a paper need to
be done in a sequence of steps, each phase building off the prior.
– We Write Best in Conversation with Others: In contrast to the image of
the solitary writer sitting alone in their candle-lit study and solving
all the world’s problems, writing is best done with lots of input from
others as ideas are developed, tested, and strengthened.
What is Academic Writing?
It’s not creative writing like fiction and poetry, where the goal is to entertain.
It’s not the journalistic writing that you read in the news, where the goal is to
inform. It’s not transactional writing, as in an email to your boss, where the
goal is to communicate.
The purpose of academic writing is to search for truth. That sounds fluffy
and philosophical, but it simply means that academic writing is where we go
to learn about the world we live in—about what is true, how things came to
be, and how we know.
Academic writing is fundamentally analytical. Even academic writing that
argues for the virtue of a certain public policy or individual action only does
so because it makes a claim to a clear-sighted understanding of an issue. In
academic writing, there are no politics and no ethics without analysis.
The purpose of any particular piece of academic writing is to tell us
something about the world that we don’t already know. Originality is the key
to success. Asking you to produce academic writing is asking you to shift
from being a receptor of knowledge to being a creator of knowledge. That’s
a big shift, but it’s also exciting because it means you’ll have an opportunity
to teach us something that you know.
There are two ways to say something new: (1) tell your readers about the
existence of something they don’t already know about, or (2) give your
readers a new interpretation of something that everyone already knows about.
So you could (1) tell your readers about an unknown source for Shakespeare’s
Academic Writing
4
Hamlet that scholars haven’t yet identified or (2) give your readers a new way
of thinking about Hamlet, a play that everyone already knows about, but one
that has some new meaning in your account of it.
Content is king in academic writing. You have to know something that others
don’t if you’re going to have any success. All the tips and strategies for writing
good papers are worthless if you don’t have some knowledge that is worth
communicating to others. So you’ll want to start asking: What am I an expert
on?
Writing is easy when you’ve got something to say. The hard part of writing
isn’t putting the words on the page. It’s having an idea that’s worth writing
about.
Under our approach, you’ll be surprised by how long it takes you to get to
the actual putting-words-on-the-page part of writing papers. Much of our
time early in the writing process will be spent building ideas. You’ll definitely
be writing as you brainstorm ideas, but we’ll also be developing and revising
ideas in conversation. During this process, your teacher and your classmates
will serve as test audiences for you, allowing you to see which of your ideas
are “clicking” with people and allowing others to offer suggestions for further
development.
How Your Writing Will Change
Looking to the future, here are five ways you can expect your writing to
change using our approach:
1. There will be a shift from focusing on the product (the paper you
turn in) to focusing on the process (the development of ideas).
2. There will be a shift from understanding a “research paper” as a
book report that synthesizes what other writers have said and “picks
a side” to understanding it as an original argument that is situated in
an ongoing academic conversation.
3. There will be a shift from the five-paragraph essay to more
sophisticated organizational structures.
4. There will be a shift from thinking about revision as editing the
language errors in a paper to thinking about it as improving an idea
and then writing a new paper for that new idea.
5. There will be a shift from writing about literature to writing about
everything.
5
2
Academic Integrity
Integrity is important in all academic work. It’s extra-important in writing.
Having academic integrity means that you’re honest in your representation
of your work. With respect to writing, there are two key areas.
First, there are the ethical aspects of academic integrity: your writing is your
writing, meaning that you did it, didn’t have someone else do it, and didn’t
steal it off the internet.
Because they involve willful attempts to deceive others, these ethical issues
are fairly straight-forward: don’t cheat and be extra-vigilant during high-stress
times (on exams or when big assignments are due) because that is when
temptations will arise. Know that, instead of doing something you’ll regret,
it’s always better to go to a teacher, explain your situation, submit incomplete
work, and create a plan for getting back on track.
Second, there are the technical aspects of academic integrity, which involve the
responsible use of sources: your writing properly cites sources when working
with other people’s ideas and accurately represents data.
This area is what we’ll focus on in our writing class because it is more
challenging than the ethical issues. You can—because of a lack of technical
skill or because you don’t dedicate sufficient time—fail to properly credit
other people’s ideas even if there’s no willful intent to deceive. In this case,
you’re not trying to cheat, but your work still lacks integrity. Plagiarism can
be intentional or unintentional. If you misrepresent your use of sources, even
if unintentionally—whether it’s borrowing ideas off the internet without
citing them or not citing a source correctly because you don’t know how to—
that’s still plagiarism.
6
3
Writing Across the Curriculum
Certain strategies of interpretation and argument apply regardless of the
academic discipline in which one is working. There are also always disciplinespecific
aspects of academic writing.
The movement known as “writing across the curriculum” cultivates an
awareness of the features of academic writing that apply universally and of
those that change depending upon the discipline in play.
Seven elements—evidence, analysis, question/problem, method, argument, structure,
and implications—appear in all academic writing across the disciplines.
Sometimes the same element appears differently in different disciplines, and
sometimes different disciplines introduce new elements.
1. Evidence: Academic writing begins with evidence. That may sound
obvious, but what, really, is evidence? The word comes from the Latin
video, “to see”: evidence is perceptible, able to be seen. In academic
writing, it is not enough to have facts, information, logic, and so forth
that supports one’s position. That material must be visible, perceptible,
able to be seen in the actual paper. Whether one is presenting facts and
dates or quotations and summaries, evidence must be literally evident in
academic writing regardless of the discipline—this in contrast to, say,
some kinds of journalism in which sources are confidential or some kinds
of editorials in which a position can be advocated without a thorough
presentation of the evidence for it.
2. Analysis: Evidence always needs analysis. Evidence, in and of itself, does
not make academic writing. Regardless of the discipline, academic
writing involves the elucidation of evidence in ways that are informed by
Writing Across the Curriculum
7
the assumptions, motives, commitments, and conventions of a
discipline. In other words, it is universally true that any instance of
academic writing is situated within and committed to a discipline, but the
disciplinary commitment of any given piece of writing changes. It is not
a distinction that holds absolutely, but the humanities tend to deal in
qualitative analysis while the sciences often deal in quantitative analysis,
and the social sciences in both. Qualitative analysis is geared toward the
description of things (of qualities), while quantitative analysis toward the
measurement of things (of quantities). As such, the humanities attempt
to explain the world primarily through the use of language, and the
sciences attempt to explain the world primarily through the use of
numbers. This is not to say that there are no concepts in the sciences or
numbers in the humanities, but there is a significant and meaningful
difference in the procedural foundation of these schools of thought.
Why? Because the humanities are addressed to subjective experience
with the world in which we live, the sciences to the objective reality of
that world, and the social sciences to the objective reality of subjective
experience.
3. Question/Problem: In theory, though certainly not in practice, any piece of
academic writing needs to be written because it provides us with a better
understanding of our world. All academic writing responds to a specific
problem or question. The distinction (once more) isn’t absolute, but the
humanities tend to respond to “problems” on the order of How should we
understand X?, while the sciences often deal in “questions” that boil down
to Is X true or not? In other words, the humanities help us think about
things with which we are already familiar while the sciences give us new
information that we don’t already have.
4. Method: In light of the different modes of analysis across the disciplines,
all academic writing employs a deliberate method that is drawn from a
distinct discipline or combination of disciplines. The methods of
interpretation and argumentation can and do change from discipline to
discipline, but a rigorous method must exist for writing to be properly
academic.
5. Structure: Similarly, all academic writing has structure to it (admittedly,
sometimes not as clear as it could be). Like method, structure depends
upon the discipline in play: different disciplines use different structures.
Yet again these conventions are not absolute, but often the humanities
use an Introduction-Body-Conclusion structure, while the sciences use an
Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion structure.
6. Argument: All academic writing also has an argument—a series of
demonstrated claims that add up to a central idea—though not
necessarily a thesis statement. A thesis is a proposition presented early in
Writing Across the Curriculum
8
an essay that is then supported with evidence and analysis throughout
the rest of the essay. Papers in the humanities have theses, but papers in
the sciences tend to have hypotheses. A hypothesis is a prediction in
response to a question that requires research; that research may prove
the hypothesis true (as expected) or untrue (leading to a different answer
to the question at hand).
7. Implications: All academic writing has implications, or extractable
knowledge that matters beyond the specifics of the argument.
Implications could consist of additional questions that need to be asked,
further research that needs to be done, theorizations, speculations, policy
implications, or any other strategies that move a discussion beyond the
interpretation of the specific issue at hand in an essay.
9
4
The Elements of Academic Writing
Our foundation will be a vocabulary we’ll call the Elements of Academic
Writing.
There are millions of academic books and articles out there. No one could
possibly read them all. There are, however, only about fifteen or so kinds of
information that appear in an academic book or article. In our course, we will
introduce and discuss each element as we go. Some of the terms below may
be confusing at first, but it will be helpful to have a glossary for the elements
of academic writing.
Text: The thing being interpreted—the object, event, topic, or
phenomenon being discussed, even if it’s not a book.
Author: The person interpreting the text.
Question/Problem: Why the text needs interpretation.
Method: How the text is being interpreted.
Thesis/Argument: The central interpretation of the text.
Stakes/Implications: Why the argument matters.
Terminology: Key concepts in the argument.
Assertion: A point in the body of an essay that has not yet been
substantiated with evidence. All the assertions should logically produce
the argument.
The Kinds of Academic Writing
10
Figure 1: The Kinds of Evidence
Evidence: The information—facts, examples, quotations, details,
experiments, data, statistics—presented in support of an assertion. There
are three kinds of evidence—textual, historical, and citational—and
evidence always receives analysis.
Textual Evidence: Facts, examples, details, quotes, etc. drawn from
the text, often followed by analysis.
Historical Evidence: Facts, examples, details, quotes, etc. from outside
the text; context that influenced or helps explain the text, often
followed by analysis.
Scholarly Evidence: Scholars cited to help deliver an argument. There are
three kinds of Scholarly Evidence: critical, historical, and theoretical.
Critical Scholarship: A scholar who has interpreted the same text
as the author, often marshaled to support analysis or argument, or
used as a counter that the author responds to.
Historical Scholarship: A scholar who has interpreted the historical
evidence relevant to a text, usually cited to help contextualize
evidence accurately.
Theoretical Scholarship: A scholar whose ideas (often abstract or
philosophical) help an author deliver an argument, even
though that scholar doesn’t directly discuss the text or context
in question.
The Kinds of Academic Writing
11
Citation: References to the sources of evidence.
Analysis: The interpretation of evidence, whether it’s textual, historical,
or scholarly.
Counter/Response: Alternate evidence, analysis, or argument (real or imagined)
that an author must account for to be fully persuasive.
The text is the centerpiece of this vocabulary. All other categories function
in relation to what is defined as the text. Until you know what the text is,
you cannot know what the argument is, since the argument is about the text.
Until you know what the text is, you cannot know if certain piece of evidence
is “inside” or “outside” the text—e.g., is textual evidence or historical evidence.
The Kinds of Academic Writing
12
5
The Kinds of Academic Writing
There are many forms of academic writing—too many to list—but most fall
into one of three large categories, which each have several sub-types.
1. The Single-Source Paper
An analysis of a single text (or idea, event, object, etc.) that identifies and
discusses some interesting or problematic aspect of that text (or idea, event,
object, etc.).
– The Close Reading: An interpretation that shows how a text was made
and/or how it works.
▪ An interpretation of Polonius’s “To thine own self be true”
speech in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
▪ An interpretation of the advisability of the United States entering
into the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
– The Theorization: The presentation of an abstract statement through
the discussion of a particular example.
▪ A theory of “the self” based on Polonius’s “To thine own self be
true” speech in Hamlet.
▪ A theory of the social causes of crime based on a case study of
East Garfield Park in Chicago, IL.
The Kinds of Academic Writing
13
– The Archival Essay: The presentation of new historical material not
widely available.
▪ A discussion of an eighteenth-century reader’s marginal
annotations on the “To thine own self be true” passage in a book
archived in the Folger Shakespeare Library.
▪ A presentation of skin diseases as drawn in ninetieth-century
medical textbooks housed in the Yale Library.
– The Empirical Report: The presentation of new data gathered through
controlled observation.
▪ A discussion of the frequency of the word “self” in each of
Shakespeare’s works.
▪ A report on how often medical personnel at the hospital in Salina,
KS washed their hands during an observation period.
– The Book Review: A summary and discussion of someone else’s book.
▪ A review of Stephen Greenblatt’s book Renaissance SelfFashioning
(1980).
▪ A review of Jordan Ellenberg’s How Not to Be Wrong: The
Power of Mathematical Thinking (2014).
2. The Multi-Source Paper
An essay that brings two or more texts (or events, ideas, objects, etc.) into
conversation on the basis of some common ground.
– The Historicist Essay: A consideration of a text in light of historical
circumstances relevant to the way it came into existence.
▪ A discussion of Polonius’s “To thine own self be true” speech in
the context of the adages in William Lily’s Latin grammar
textbook, Rudimenta Grammatices, which Shakespeare would
have studied as a student.
▪ An argument that the Republican party has mobilized
conservative social issues to get Kansas farmers to vote for
conservative fiscal policies that aren’t in their own best interests.
– The Comparative Essay: A consideration of similar texts, ideas,
events that come from different contexts.
▪ A discussion of the treatment of the self in the sixteenth-century
English playwright William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the
The Kinds of Academic Writing
14
nineteenth-century German philosopher’s G.W.F. Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Mind.
▪ An illustration of how Thomas Hobbes and John Locke’s
different views of “nature” led them to support different forms
of government.
– The Lens Essay: The use of one text or idea (usually philosophical
or theoretical in nature) to unpack and explain a particular example
or set of data.
▪ A reading of Polonius’s “To thine own self be true” speech from
the perspective of the American sociologist Erving Goffman’s
book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959).
▪ An argument using Darwinian theories of evolutionary biology to
explain dating in American high schools.
– The Test-a-Theory Essay: The use of an example or data set to
evaluate (and potentially improve or disprove) a general
philosophical or theoretical idea.
▪ A consideration of whose theory of tragedy—Aristotle’s, Hegel’s,
or Miller’s—best explains Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
▪ An essay asking if the ISIS attacks in Paris in November 2015
support Martha Crenshaw’s “rational choice theory” of
terrorism.
– The Presentist Essay: The use of a historical text or idea to unpack
and discuss a recent text or idea.
▪ A reading of Polonius’s “To thine own self be true” speech as a
way to discuss the difficulties of parenting in the increasingly
global world of the twenty-first century.
▪ A discussion of the “classical style” of Roman writers like Cicero
designed to convince academics to write essays with less bloated
language.
– The Meta-Analysis: A collection and synthesis of several studies on
a related topic in an effort to draw some more stable or general
conclusions.
▪ A synthesis of seven studies of the self in seven different US
populations in an attempt to establish a general theory of the self.
▪ A consideration of the past twenty years of research on the
relationship between poverty and lottery ticket sales.
The Kinds of Academic Writing
15
– The Review Essay: A discussion and critique of several recent studies
on a related topic designed to ascertain the state of a field.
▪ A critique of recent studies of the self in Shakespeare’s drama by
John Lee, Bridget Escolme, and Mustapha Fahmi.
▪ A discussion of the status of race in higher education admissions
based on the arguments in recent books by Franklin Tuitt and
Julie Park.
3. The Research Paper
A special kind of essay—whether single-source or multi-source—that cites,
discusses, and advances previous scholarship on a given topic. In other
words, an original contribution to an on-going field of academic inquiry.
* * *
Note that none of the categories listed is something like “take a position,”
“choose a side,” or “advocate a policy” because those are things that can be
done in any kind of paper. Those are kinds of arguments rather than kinds of
essays. Any of the kinds of essays listed here could be descriptive / analytical
/ philosophical (concerned with explanation) or normative / ethical /
political (concerned with advocacy). This typology of academic writing is
organized not by purpose but by the fields of evidence that come into play.
16
6
The Writing Process
Writing is best done in a sequence. Each step sets you up to take the next
step. If you find that something isn’t clicking in your paper, it’s often because
you tried to skip over or move too quickly through one of the steps. Go back
and figure out which step you didn’t take.
Below is a sequence of steps that provide a sense of what a good research
project looks like. Note that about half of the sequence is about coming up
with a good idea to write about, and about half is about actually writing that
idea out in an effective paper.
Read a text: And then read it again.
Identify a problem, ask a question: Identify some quirks, quandaries,
contradictions, gray areas, moments that run counter to expectation, etc.
in your text—a problem that demands interpretation. The writing
process begins not with a point that you want to make but with a
question that you want to investigate.
Identify your topic: Articulate what specifically you are going to interpret.
Identify, collect, and organize your evidence: Identify the places in the text that
you will need to look in order to answer that question. You don’t need
an interpretation; you just need a clear understanding of the information
that needs interpretation: Just the facts, ma’am. Make a list of all of the
relevant places in your text. Maybe make a timeline or chart of
information related to your topic. Identify the passage that is the mostimportant
place to look for answering your question.
The Writing Process
17
Analyze your evidence: Start with your key passage. Do an explication,
making as many observations about that key evidence as possible. How
might an observation or set of observations about your key evidence
unlock and elucidate the rest of the text? Consider making a conceptual
map of your ideas about your evidence in which you visualize the
structure of your idea about the material.
Write out an argument: If you make a conceptual map, writing it out in
words should be fairly easy. Simply narrate the parts and progression of
your analysis in, say, 300-600 words. We’ll call this an “argument
statement,” which is different from a “thesis statement.”
Draft a working thesis: The sequence of ideas that led you to an important
insight about the text is your argument. Your thesis is the one- or twosentence
main claim about your text that you want your reader to accept
because it is true. It is true, but it isn’t obvious. If a thesis is obvious, then
we don’t need you to write a paper arguing it. A thesis that is obvious is
just as bad as a thesis that isn’t true (well, not quite as bad).
Develop your implications: Articulate the pay-off of your argument, which
should illustrate its value. Do so by asking, What can we do with the knowledge
created by my argument?
Identify, find, and collect your scholarship: Search for, find, and collect
scholarship that has addressed your topic or similar topics. Download,
print, or make copies or scans of all sources so that you will always have
access to them.
Read the scholarship: Read through the scholarly books and articles you
have collected. Create an annotated bibliography that summarizes each
source you examine.
Analyze your scholarship: Consider the relationship between your
understanding of your topic (i.e., your working thesis) and the
scholarship, not to change your ideas to match those of the published
scholars, but to mark out where you might make an original contribution
to the academic conversation. Are there any gaps in the scholarship?
Reconsider your evidence and analyses: Based on your collection, reading, and
analysis of the scholarship on your topic and text(s), revisit the
information you have collected and the analyses you have conducted to
make your interpretation as complete and accurate as possible.
The Writing Process
18
Revise your thesis: Based on your revised information and analyses, revisit
your working thesis, revising it so that it is as complete and accurate an
account of your interpretation as possible.
NOTE: Everything up to this point has been about how to develop a
good argument; everything that follows is about how to present that
argument effectively in a paper.
Make a basic outline: You now know the thesis that your entire paper
should be devoted to supporting. Draft an outline with (1) an
introduction that describes a problem and responds to it with a thesis;
(2) a body that supports your thesis by walking your reader through the
evidence and analysis that illustrate your argument; and (3) a conclusion
that includes a full argument statement, considers any counter-evidence
or -arguments, and discusses the implications of your argument.
Write a draft: Turn your outline into prose. Writing is the easy part of
writing: putting words together in sentences to produce compelling
claims is easy if you have done the work of interpretation that generates
an argument worth presenting. It is only when you don’t have a quality
argument that the actual writing is difficult.
Revise your argument: In the course of writing your draft, your argument
may change. You may, while articulating your evidence and analyses,
have landed upon some new insights that improve your argument or lead
to a completely different argument. Write out a new “argument
statement” that represents your most up-to-date understanding of your
topic.
Revise your thesis: If you revised your argument statement, you also need
to revise your thesis statement. Once you’ve updated your thesis to
reflect your most current thinking on your topic, you’ve got a finished
draft.
NOTE: What follows is the first step in the “cycle of revision”; revision
is not something that happens just once, but over and over to make the
paper better and better.
Solicit feedback: The first part of the revision process is to ask for
comments from peers, teachers, random people on the street, anyone
who will give it.
Create a plan for revision: Some of the comments you receive will simply be
edits to your language; those are quick fixes. More importantly, carefully
read their comments on your ideas, and rather than just diving into a
The Writing Process
19
revision, consider what it is you need to accomplish in your revision, and
create a plan for doing so.
Create a new detailed outline: Revision is not about fixing your earlier draft;
it’s about writing a new paper. Based on the comments you’ve received,
and your continuing thoughts on your project, create a new outline—not
a revision of your previous outline, but a new outline based on what the
completely new paper you would write today would look like. Create first
a basic outline (which covers the ideas you’re addressing and the order
in which you’re addressing them), and then a detailed outline (which adds
the substantive claims you’re making about those ideas).
Reread and incorporate the scholarship: Having developed your ideas, your
argument, and your paper into a fairly mature form, go back and revisit
some of the key sources from the scholarship regarding your topic; you’ll
find that your enhanced understanding of the issue allows you to judge
more effectively which critics get things right and which get things
wrong. Incorporate your new insights on the scholarship into your
detailed outline. Acknowledge and compliment those who have gotten
the issue right; take down those who have gotten it wrong.
Revise your paper: The process of revision involves the cycle between
updating your evidence and analysis, and then updating your argument
and thesis to reflect your updated analyses. The most successful paper
will be the one that is constantly updated—sometimes even rewritten
from scratch—to reflect your must current understanding of your topic.
Edit your draft: Read through your paper, from start to finish, several
times, to fix any language errors, to increase the clarity and concision of
your language, and to ensure that your style and formatting are correct.
Repeat the cycle of revision as needed: Go back to the first step in the “cycle of
revision,” having your peers and professors read your paper, and repeat
the cycle as much as necessary until you arrive at a paper you’re happy
with.
The Writing Process
20
— Practicum —
Scheduling Your Writing
Sometimes, writing a great paper isn’t about how brilliant you are. It’s
about project management: knowing what to do, the order in which to do
it, and keeping to schedule.
Once you’ve got a due date for a paper, create a schedule that includes
these major checkpoints:
– Read my text
– Identify my question/problem
– Identify my topic
– Identify, collect, organize my evidence
– Analyze my evidence
– Write out an argument
– Draft a working thesis
– Develop my implications
– Identify, find, collect my scholarship
– Read the scholarship
– Analyze my scholarship
– Reconsider evidence and analyses
– Revise my thesis
– Make a basic outline
– Write a draft
– Revise my argument
– Revise my thesis
– Solicit feedback
– Create a plan for revision
– Create a new detailed outline
– Reread and incorporate the scholarship
– Revise my paper
– Edit my draft
21
Two
Theory
22
7
Textuality
You’re reading text, words on a page (or screen). You’re also reading a text,
understood as a particular document filled with words. In your backpack you
have other texts, the kind stacked in the bookstore, what your teacher means
when he tells you to bring your text to class everyday.
Immediately let’s expand our definition of what a text is. The term comes
from a Latin word, texere, “to weave,” as in a textile, woven maybe for
warmth, maybe for decoration. For any number of reasons, authors create or
compose or write “texts” by weaving instincts, impulses, habits, and desires
into a material object. It broadens our definition to think of a text as
something, anything, deliberately made by human hands in a certain way in
order to accomplish a certain goal.
Trying to discover how and why someone made something in that way that
it was made is called interpretation. In other words, interpretation is the search
for the intent of the author of a text.
These words, this document, those books in your bag are still texts, but much
else is too: nutritional info on the back of your cereal box, an e-mail from
your mom about coming home for the weekend, billboard signs as you drive
on the highway, advertisements on TV, text messages from your bff, a
syllabus from your Math professor, rottentomatoes.com film reviews of a
movie you might go see this weekend, an editorial about recycling on campus,
instructions on how to use your newest iPhone app, ads flashing on the edges
of your Facebook page. Books are still texts, but speeches, songs,
conversations, art, plays, films, TV shows, video games, presentations,
buildings, and events—all things created to accomplish a goal—are texts too.
Textuality
23
Even people are texts: we compose ourselves to others. Whether ratty or
classy, your classmate’s shirt sends a message for you to read, a message about
how she views herself, how she wants you to view her, and how she views
your shared social situation. When you ask for an extension on an
assignment, your professor’s facial expression is a composition for you to
interpret. From this perspective, even social events, social institutions, social
structures, and—yes—societies are texts: all are deliberately made by humans
to accomplish some goal.
That tree you pass as you walk across campus—is that a text? If it was
planned and planted to accomplish a goal, then yes. What would your
interpretation (account of the author’s intent) be? Maybe photosynthesis,
maybe beauty, maybe shade.
What about the tree that grows naturally in a forest, untouched by human
hands, the one no one would hear if it fell: is that a text? There are two ways
to argue that it is: a theological way and a philosophical way.
First, some theologies will say that it, like everything, was created to
accomplish a goal, by a higher power; this is one version of “everything
happens for a reason.” The inaccessibility of God’s intent does not mean that
no intent exists.
Second, some philosophies will point out that the tree may not be a human
creation, but any experience with that tree (perceiving it, describing it, using
it as an example as I am doing now) is going to involve some sort of human
invention (turning a retinal impression into a mental perception, using
language to communicate an idea, making a point about textuality). The tree
is not a text, but any experience with it is a human creation. From this
perspective, everything is a text: it is not material objects that we interpret
but our subjective experience with them, which is one way to read the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida’s famous pronouncement, Il n’y a pas de horstexte,
“There is nothing outside the text” or “There is no outside-of-the-text.”
The idea that we ourselves create the objects of our interpretation, so no
interpretation is “objective,” is fairly mundane when applied to a tree, but
what about applying this idea to things like reality, truth, and virtue?
While keeping both the theological and the philosophical positions in mind,
let’s come back down to earth. Let’s draw the line in our definition of a text at
“something (whether material object or immaterial event) made by someone
(or a group of people) in an attempt to accomplish a certain goal.”
As such, the idea of textuality is that our world is full of texts, full of things
we humans have made, and we can interpret those “texts” in the same way
that we interpret “texts” more traditionally understood (as in works of
literature). Just as you can interpret the structure, genre, characters, and
Textuality
24
themes of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, you can interpret the structure, genre,
characters, and themes of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The notion that
we can view our world as filled with texts is the basis of both humanism (and,
by extension, the academic fields called “the humanities”) and rhetorical
theory (and, by extension, the academic field called “cultural studies”).
25
8
The Humanities
Institutionally speaking, the humanities is an umbrella term that refers to a
set of academic disciplines usually including (more or less) Classics, History,
Philosophy, Religion, Law, Literature, Linguistics, the Visual Arts (such as
Painting, Photography, and Film) and the Performing Arts (such as Music,
Theatre, and Dance).
Conceptually speaking, the humanities study the things humans make—our
art, writings, thoughts, religions, governments, histories, technologies, and
societies—helping us understand who we are, what we do, how we do it,
why, and with what consequences.
(The sciences study naturally occurring phenomena, the things that humans
didn’t invent: rocks, stars, molecules, animals, gravity, chemical reactions, the
circulation of blood, and so forth.)
The humanities help us understand the experience of being human by asking
the big questions that individuals and societies face day after day, year after
year, generation after generation, and century after century: What is true? Why
do we do what we do? How should we lead our lives?
The humanities try to get to the bottom of things when the best way to
understand something is unclear, asking and answering questions that aren’t
easily accounted for with common sense.
They usually treat answers as provisional and open to revision. Thus, we
come to reckon with the relationship between the past and the present.
The Humanities
26
The humanities identify historical objects, events, and traditions that deserve
to be known and thought about today, raising questions about how we
exercise judgment and how we determine value.
Forcing us to articulate what we think is true and good, and why, the
humanities train our mental capabilities: our ability to interpret and our ability
to explain. Thus, we develop the skills needed to think about and talk about
why we do what we do.
A premium is placed on both reflection (bringing about the possibility of
changing one’s own mind) and justification (bringing about the possibility of
changing someone else’s mind).
The humanities provide neither rules for living (as church does), nor training
for a certain job (as vocational schools do). Instead, they provide the skills
that equip people with the ability to do other things better.
That’s why it’s equally mistaken to believe (1) that the humanities are a selfcontained
end in themselves that can remain cozily insulated in academia,
and (2) that people don’t need the humanities if they’re going to pursue a
vocation outside academia.
The humanities are based in the notion of textuality—the idea that the world
is full of texts, or things we humans have created (whether material objects
like a poem or immaterial events like a war), and that we can interpret those
“texts” in the same ways that we interpret “texts” more traditionally
understood (as in works of literature).
27
9
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is a prerequisite for the successful pursuit of knowledge.
Understood as the study of modes of interpretation and argument, rhetoric
is needed regardless of the discipline or field you plan to pursue because
rhetoric equips you with the forms and strategies of thought and speech that
you’ll use to investigate and discuss material specific to your academic
endeavors, whatever they may be.
One of the seven classical liberal arts, rhetoric—from the Greek rhetor,
“speaker”—is the art of speaking. Traditionally, rhetoric was addressed as
“the art of speaking” in a limited sense, as in the art of delivering a persuasive
public oration. More recently, rhetoric has come to be seen as “the art of
speaking” in the more general sense of “communication,” including the skills
of thinking, reading, and writing.
Broadly conceived, therefore, there are two branches of rhetoric—the
practical (which is classical) and the theoretical (which is modern). Practical
rhetoric is about persuasion; rhetorical theory is about interpretation.
Practical rhetoric is about writing texts, while rhetorical theory is about
reading texts. Practical rhetoric is about writing your own text, structuring it,
communicating an idea. Rhetorical theory is about reading someone else’s
text, making sense of it, interpreting it.
Practical Rhetoric
In the tradition of Aristotle, practical rhetoric is largely about strategies for
effective argumentation. There are three modes of persuasion:
Rhetoric
28
– Logos refers to the appeal of an argument based on its logical
consistency.
– Ethos refers to the speaker’s ability to present him- or herself as a
credible authority.
– Pathos refers to the speaker’s ability to rouse emotions in his audience
that influence their willingness to accept his or her argument.
Logos relates to the argument itself, ethos to the speaker and pathos to the
audience. Aristotle said that one’s ethos is achieved by what one says, not by
the attitude of the audience before one’s speech begins. In other words, you
establish credibility not by being a recognized expert but by conducting
yourself in a way that grants you authority.
For Aristotle, there are three kinds of oratory:
– A forensic argument is legal.
– A deliberative argument is political.
– An epideictic argument is ethical.
For each kind of oratory, Aristotle attached (1) a binary of themes, (2) a time
period, and (3) an end:
– A forensic argument is (1) about accusation and defense, (2) with
reference to the past, and (3) in the service of justice.
– A deliberative argument is (1) about exhortation and dehortation, (2)
with reference to the future, and (3) about expediency.
– An epideictic argument is (1) about praise and blame, (2) with
reference to the present, and (3) in the service of honor.
According to Aristotle, there are four parts of oratory:
(1) the prooemium or introduction;
(2) the prosthesis, which is a statement of the proposition to be argued;
(3) the pistis, which is the proof of the statement;
(4) the epilogue or conclusion.
These parts of oratory are roughly analogous to the commonly taught threepart
structure of the modern essay: Introduction (which includes a thesis),
Body, and Conclusion.
Rhetorical Theory
Rhetorical theory can be thought of as the philosophy of communication. It
involves the study and mastery of interpretation and argumentation. It
attends not to what we think and say but to how we think and speak.
Rhetoric
29
Where practical rhetoric addresses the steps one can take to create a
persuasive argument, rhetorical theory focuses more on interpretation of
something that someone else has created. It identifies and explains the
various factors that played a part in the creation of a thing, its emergence in
the world.
As such, rhetorical theory is about the situatedness of things. Every idea and
every event emerges in contexts that condition its coming-into-existence.
Stated as such, this notion is obvious and benign, but, if true, then all meaning
is circumstantial. Both acts of textual creation and acts of textual
interpretation—both writing and reading—are situated among circumstances
that condition those actions. It is those circumstantial aspects of action that
rhetorical theory addresses.
If practical rhetoric is prescriptive, detailing (as it does) the means of effective
persuasion, rhetorical theory is descriptive, attending to the forms of
communication, whether persuasive or not.
Rhetorical theory does not belong to any one discipline. It is an
“interdiscipline,” because all disciplines use rhetoric to package the truths of
that discipline.
30
10
Interpretation
Interpretation is the search for meaning and significance.
Meaning is an account of what an author wanted to communicate, what the
author was trying to accomplish.
Significance is an explanation of how and why something came into existence
(what the text points to) or its importance (why it matters).
Meaning as Intent
A text means what its author intended it to mean. This is the “intentionalist thesis.”
While clearly circular, the intentionalist thesis can be useful once its
keywords—text, meaning, author, intent—are unpacked.
If a text is anything (whether that “thing” is a material object or an immaterial
event) created by a human or group of humans in some deliberate way in
order to accomplish some purpose, there must exist someone or some group
who did the creating.
There are no texts without authors. The existence of a text implies the
existence of an author, a word we take from the Latin augere, “to increase,”
and its cognate auctor, “one who causes to grow.” The author is the agent of
the actions that result in the text. Simply put, the author is who made the
text.
If the existence of a text implies the existence of an author, the existence of
an author implies the existence of intent. Our word intent comes from the
Interpretation
31
Latin tenere, “to hold,” and its cognate intendere, “to stretch out,” as in an
archer’s bow that is held and stretched out to fire an arrow at a target. The
author’s intent is the direction the author hopes his or her text will travel,
what the author wants the text to do, and the actions the author performs in
order to ensure the text does what he or she wants it to do. Intent is what an
author does to ensure his or her text travels in a certain direction, like an
archer carving, feathering, knocking, drawing, aiming, and firing an arrow.
The existence of a text implies the existence of an author implies the
existence of intent implies the existence of meaning.
As a gerund (a verbal that functions as a noun), meaning expresses an action
(“to mean”) but also a thing (“the meaning”): meaning is something that is
done that becomes something that is. Meaning is what is done, or was done,
including how it is or was done and why it is or was done. The meaning of a
text is what is or was done to produce that text, including how and why.
Thus, a text means what its author intended it to mean.
Significance as What is Pointed To
Yet there can be forces working upon a text beyond an author’s conscious,
deliberate goals. There can be social or historical events and values that shape
how a text came into existence in the way that it did. Those forces are what
the text signifies.
Consider what the literary theorist M.H. Abrams called ”the total situation of
a work of art,” which is comprised of four “elements”: the Work, the Artist,
the Audience, and the Universe.
The Work (OE weorc, “something done”) is the material oboject created
through an orderly set of operations.
The Artist (L. ars, “skill, craft”) is the person whose orderly set of
operations creates a material object.
The Audience (L. audire, “to hear”) is the group who experiences the
material object.
The Universe (L. unus, “one” + vertere ”to turn”) is the whole of existence
that conditions both the artist and the audience.
In our vocabulary, attention to how the artist created the work would involve
questions of meaning.
Interpretation
32
Questions of significance would ask how the universe affected the author,
the work, and its ongoing audiences, or how the work has affected audiences
and the universe.
Figure 2: The Total Situation of the Text
Three
Interpretation
34
11
Close Reading
Close reading is the foundation of academic writing because the purpose of
academic writing is to make an original contribution to a field of knowledge.
Close reading is how you get to originality.
“Close reading” isn’t just “reading.” Close reading focuses on what is not
obvious, on what requires “close” as opposed to “surface” attention.
An argument may be true yet still not good because it’s obvious: good
arguments deliver truths that go beyond the obvious.
Close reading is a practice often associated with literary studies, but you can
do close readings of historical events and social phenomena. You can do
close readings of quantitative data.
Let’s say you have some data showing that arrests in New York City have
steadily decreased over the past three months. A surface reading might
assume that crime has gone down, but a close reading could reveal that police
have not been making arrests to protest the mayor’s lack of funding for the
police. Crime has not gone down, only arrests. If that fact is widely known,
it could be that crime has gone up because arrests have gone down.
Close reading is about how evidence doesn’t interpret itself. Evidence needs
analysis. And evidence can sometimes seem to support one position while
the careful analysis of that evidence leads to a different understanding.
Close Reading
35
Strategies for Close Reading
Some possible approaches to close reading include:
– Contrast or complicate a “surface reading” with a “close reading.”
– Select a topic or text that isn’t well known and show how it
challenges or complicates common assumptions.
– Select a topic or text that is widely known and produce a reading that
is new and surprising.
– Offer a close reading that is only available due to your perspective,
using your own experiences, identities, attitudes, and beliefs as a
prompt for insight.
– Offer an outsider’s understanding of a topic or text, one that upends
how experts tend to think about it.
– Generate a theory, extrapolating outward from an analysis of a
specific topic or text to propose a generalizable idea that might
explain other things.
Not Using Sources
When close reading, don’t consult sources beyond your text(s). When
working with something that is new or confusing, there is a natural instinct
to seek out someone that can explain it. Resist that urge because you want to
become the expert who can explain it.
There is a virtue in not using sources in a close reading, especially internet
sources such as Sparknotes and Wikipedia. These sources do not give the
interpretation of a text but an interpretation and sometimes a bad
interpretation.
Relying upon these sources is inimical to academic writing, the point of which
is to say something new—not to be “right” when your ideas are compared
with your professor’s ideas or published scholarship, but to add something
new to an ongoing academic conversation. If you bring in outside sources,
whether from the internet or the library, your writing will be derivative. You
will find yourself reduced to agreeing and disagreeing with the ideas of others
as opposed to generating an original idea of your own.
36
12
Perspective
The only reason to write an essay—ever—is because you know something
your audience doesn’t. Sometimes, that knowledge comes from knowing
your situation in life better than anyone else. Maybe others share that
situation, and you’re able to speak to it. Maybe folks who aren’t in that
situation could benefit from seeing an issue from that perspective.
Perspective is one of your greatest resources as a writer. Having a welldeveloped
perspective is what keeps readers coming back for more.
Your perspective is the way you see the world from your unique position in
it—the sustained point-of-view on life you have developed over time, as
conditioned by your experiences, values, and goals.
Use your perspective to help you decide which texts and topics to write
about. Don’t write about something you don’t care about. When you’re
writing a paper, ask how you can “find yourself” in the material—your
concerns and interests—because you’ve already thought a lot about those
issues. You have expertise. You might have something to teach us. So what’s
your perspective?
Perspective is closely bound up with experiences and identities. The best way
to develop your perspective is to think about what matters to you most in
life. You don’t need to discuss those experiences and identities in your paper.
Sometimes you can: being vulnerable is one way to build trust with your
reader. Even if you don’t make it explicit in the actual essay, you should still
use your perspective to inform what you write about and the arguments you
make.
Perspective
37
Having perspective doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve been through some
traumatic hardship. Sometimes you have, and that can be a part of your
perspective. We always learn something when we live through difficulty. But
perspective is really just about the specifics of your situation in the world,
and how your worldview might provide important insight on texts that need
interpretation.
Don’t try to be objective. Objectivity is a myth. Embrace your perspective as
a human and a writer. Allow that perspective to influence and play a part in
your argument. When people tell you to “be objective,” what they really want
is for you to be rigorous in your analysis of evidence; they don’t want you to
pretend like you’re not who you are.
Perspective
38
— Practicum —
Establishing Your Perspective
The questions below are designed to help you discover and formalize your
perspective. Aim for honesty and consequentiality.
1. Identities: List two identities you hold that give your life meaning. These
could be biographical (e.g., middle child, father deceased, star athlete,
military, etc.), geographical (city kid, Southerner, American), cultural
(wealthy, Hispanic, atheist), political (radical, conservative, independent),
sexual (in love, transsexual, virgin), or anything else that comes to mind.
2. Concentrations: List the two academic fields you are most fascinated by
(i.e., possible majors or concentrations).
3. Extracurriculars: Write down two extracurriculars you partake in (formally
or informally).
4. Classes: List the college classes you’ve taken, and any particularly
memorable ones from high school.
5. Expertise: Identify a specific topic you know a lot about (e.g., some
people, for whatever reason, know a lot about the French revolution, or
soil density, or what have you).
6. Languages: Do you speak any languages other than English?
7. Social Challenges: What do you think is the single greatest problem facing
society today?
8. Your Life: What has been the single most influential event on your
development as a human being?
9. Your Times: What has been the most important historical event of your
lifetime?
Perspective
39
Into the Essay
A paragraph using personal experience to introduce a topic.
A sentence using personal positionality for analysis.
A paragraph using personal experience to establish expertise on a topic.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
I once tried to commit suicide. Twenty years later, it’s still hard to talk about. I didn’t
want to die. Self-esteem issues, depression, alcoholism. I was signaling, in an unhealthy
way, that I was in pain and needed help. A better way would have been to call 911 or the
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (https:/suicidepreventionlifeline.org/) at 1-800-273-
8255. It was the age of Nirvana. Depression and suicide were in the air in U.S. teen
culture. A close friend had moved away from our small Midwestern town. Beforehand,
he started acting out. A few times he lost it, had some public meltdowns. Yelling. Crying.
It rattled us all. High drama. Huge audience. I didn’t consciously recognize that his
performances garnered him massive attention, and I might do the same, but it was classic
modeling behavior.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determination
This critique of fate, written in the twenty-first century by me, an atheist, could just as
easily have been written by a sixteenth-century Christian like Shakespeare.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Hi, my name is Jeff, and I’m a Shakespeare scholar. The first step was admitting I had a
problem. I spend a lot of time making amends. I’m also a recovering alcoholic, which is
why I flinch at gimmicks like Shit-Faced Shakespeare, where actors see how far into
their benders they can remember their lines. Good fun, but Shakespeare thought alcohol
was a major social problem. Many examples support this argument—Christopher Sly,
Falstaff, Bardolph, Claudius, Cassio, the Porter in Macbeth, Barnadine, Lepidus,
Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban—and not many stand against it (“Dost thou think
because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” [Twelfth Night, 2.3.106-
07]).
40
13
Questions and Problems
Most people know that an argumentative paper needs a “thesis statement.”
A paper also needs a good “problem statement.” A question/problem statement
maps out a challenging, contested, or difficult-to-understand issue that needs
interpretation.
Don’t allow your argument to be free-floating intelligence. Having an
amazing argument isn’t good enough. A good question/problem statement gives
your reader a reason to care by showing why an argument needs to be made.
Identifying Problems and Asking Questions
To develop a good question/problem, do some reading and thinking first. A
question/problem is not something you ask before interpreting a text or topic
but after. It’s what needs more interpretation beyond the initial pass.
Sometimes we read something, have an idea, and then write a paper about it.
Don’t do that. Instead, ask a question that you currently can’t answer. Identify
a problem that you currently can’t solve. That’s a question/problem worthy of a
paper.
A good question/problem:
– Speaks to a genuine dilemma. It should grow from a confusion,
ambiguity, or grey area of a text, an aspect about which readers will
have different reactions, opinions, or interpretations.
– Is answerable given the available evidence. You must have access to
the source(s) needed to respond to the question.
Questions and Problems
41
– Yields an answer that is not obvious. Your question/problem should
call for interpretation, not facts.
Here are some additional tips to keep in mind:
– How and why questions are better than who, what, when, or where
questions.
– Good questions can highlight patterns and connections or
contradictions and disconnections.
– Good questions should suggest the implications or consequences of
an analysis.
Problems and questions might develop from:
– Assumption: a gap between expectation and experience; something is
different than you thought it would be.
– Perception: a gap between appearance and reality; something seems
different than it actually is.
– Ethics: a gap between the ideal and the real; something ought to be
different than it is.
Some other strategies that you might consider for identifying problems and
asking questions include:
– A Situated Perspective: Your concerns, experiences, identity,
specialized knowledge, or point-of-view open up an insight about a
text that isn’t obvious.
– A Presentist Reading: Some new historical event or perspective has
emerged that allows us to reread and rethink an older text or topic.
– A New Phenomenon: Something new has emerged in the world—or a
new version of something old—that demands interpretation.
Question/Problem1 and Question/Problem2
Your question/problem articulates why your paper needs to be written. In the
early stages of the writing process, that need for interpretation grows directly
out of the materials you’re looking at—your text. After a writer has
formulated a question/problem, the next step is often to go do some research
to see how others have answered that question or solved that problem. Don’t
do that!
Because originality is the key to success in academic writing, try to answer
your driving question/problem first—by yourself—before reading what other
people think about it. You’ll read that scholarship later in the writing process
but, first, try to develop your own original interpretation. Ignore the
scholarship for now and go straight to the materials that need interpretation.
Questions and Problems
42
If you do, you’ll later be able to read that scholarship and determine how
your argument makes an original contribution to an ongoing academic
conversation (which is the goal of a research paper).
At this point, we need to draw a distinction between two kinds of
question/problem statements:
– Question/Problem1: The issue in the text that needs interpretation.
– Question/Problem2: The shortcoming in previous scholarship on the
topic.
If you’re writing a single-source or multi-source essay—papers that don’t
include scholarly research—you’ll only have a question/problem1. If you’re
writing a research paper, you’ll want to include a second statement—
question/problem2—which involves what is called a “literature review.” For a
literature review, a writer researches, narrates, and cites the various
interpretations that have previously been published, and then justifies the
need for additional interpretation.
Broadly speaking, therefore, question/problems can come from two realms:
(1) from a text itself because there is some question, confusion,
ambiguity, contradiction, etc. that needs interpretation;
(2) from the scholarship related to a text because there is some gap,
misconception, or undeveloped line of thought in an academic field.
Toward the Paper
One thing that can happen during the writing process is that you realize
you’ve developed an answer to a question that you weren’t really asking. A
paper on Shakespeare’s Hamlet that began with the problem that Horatio isn’t
a very good friend to Hamlet could end up with an argument that answers
the question, “How did Shakespeare see himself as an artist?” When
something like this happens, make sure that the question/problem presented in
your paper is the one that your thesis resolves rather than the one that
inaugurated your investigation. (Your initial question/problem, however, will
still probably have a place somewhere in your paper, maybe near the
beginning of the body of the essay.)
When you get to the actual essay, you’ll need to think about the best way to
structure your presentation of your question/problem alongside the other
Elements of Academic Writing.
Questions and Problems
43
Let’s say you’re writing a short single-source analysis. You might develop a
question/problem in the first paragraph, and then answer it with a thesis in the
second paragraph. This sort of introduction is called The Q&A:
Paragraph 1: Question/Problem Statement
– Orientation
– Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraph 2: Thesis Statement
– Text
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
If you’re writing a research paper, you’ll want to include a literature review
that cites and analyzes previous scholarship on your topic or a related field.
To do so, you’ll need to include a second question/problem statement (related
to the criticism—question/problem2) in between the first question/problem
statement and the thesis:
Paragraph 1: Question/Problem Statement
– Orientation
– Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraph 2: Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: Thesis Statement
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
Questions and Problems
44
— Practicum —
Writing an Analytical Question
Practically speaking, a question/problem statement can be articulated in a
three-part structure:
(1) Make a Reference: through quotation, paraphrase, and/or summary,
provide some evidence from the text you’re looking at;
(2) Make a Claim: unpack that evidence with analysis;
(3) Ask a Question: open up a field of inquiry by discussing the
question/problem that emerges from your analysis of that evidence.
Questions and Problems
45
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Questions and Problems
1. According to the Penguin edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there are 3,834 lines in the
play. 325 of them are spoken by women, Ophelia (170 lines) and Gertrude (155 lines),
the only two women in the play out of the more than 30 characters listed in the dramatic
personae. In other words, although roughly half of the human population is made up of
women, they make up roughly 7 percent of the characters in Hamlet and speak roughly 8
percent of the lines in the play. Why is the role of women so diminished in Hamlet? Is
this evidence of sexism on Shakespeare’s part? Of sexism in Shakespeare’s society?
What do we do with the fact that the most famous play in the history of English literature
systematically ignores half of humankind?
2. Polonius, the character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is most memorable for being a
bumbling old fool, an overbearing father, and the guy who gets accidentally stabbed
while spying on Prince Hamlet. It’s easy to look down on Polonius, or to roll your eyes at
him, as Queen Gertrude does after one of his long-winded rants, when she asks for “more
matter with less art” (2.2.95). Yet Polonius finds himself in a number of situations that,
speaking as a father, are difficult to navigate. He’s a single father doing his best to raise
two rebellious teenagers while working a high-demand job in government. His son has
gone off to college in another country—that’s nerve-wracking. The prince wants to marry
his daughter—that’s even more terrifying. And while Shakespeare’s play is filled with
examples of very bad parenting—King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, King Hamlet—
Polonius holds it all together without murdering his brother, marrying his dead husband’s
brother, or returning from the grave to tell his son to go kill someone. What happens if
we view Polonius not through the eyes of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—which is the point
of view Shakespeare’s play asks audiences to adopt—but by way of analogy to modern
single parents doing their best to juggle home life and work life? How does
Shakespeare’s play read differently when Polonius is seen as a sympathetic figure rather
than as an easy target for laughter?
3. According to Horatio, King Hamlet once slaughtered some Pollocks while in “parle”
(1.1.62), or peaceful negotiations. Horatio also describes how King Hamlet entered into a
duel with Old Fortinbras, a Norwegian lord, each king placing his claim to a piece of land
on the line such that the victor would gain control over it, a duel King Hamlet partook in,
Horatio says, because he was “pricked on by a most emulate pride” (1.1.83). These two
passages, coming in the first scene of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, provide an unflattering
initial image of King Hamlet (an image that Prince Hamlet would surely dispute). Old
King Hamlet did not observe the rules of war, and he was willing to jeopardize a piece of
his country in order to satisfy his personal pride. If we can consider the possibility (with
apologies to young Prince Hamlet) that old King Hamlet was not a very good king, is it
also possible to conceive of Claudius as a republican revolutionary? That is, can we think
of Claudius as someone who believes (and is willing to fight for the belief) that nations
should be governed by those who are most fit to run them as opposed to those who are
born into royalty and a line of succession? Can we think of Claudius as a virtuous
political revolutionary? Can we conceive of his marriage to Gertrude not as a perverse
and illicit sexual union but as a political marriage designed to stabilize the teetering state
of Denmark in the eyes of its enemies?
Questions and Problems
46
Into the Essay
The opening of an essay using evidence and analysis to establish the question/problem.
The opening of an essay using evidence, analysis, and critical scholarship to establish the
question/problem.
From What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College
Every fall, millions of parents send millions of children off to college for the
first time, and those parents must find something ceremonious to say. What do we say to
the sons and daughters we’ve been able to mold, mentor, guide, and indeed save (often
from themselves) as they step out of our control and into a world that—quite frankly—
they don’t understand, couldn’t possibly understand?
William Shakespeare actually wrote a scene about this event. It appears in his
most famous play, Hamlet, and it gives us one of his most quoted lines: “To thine own self
be true.” This line has inspired countless valedictorian addresses and blog posts. Films
such as The Last Days of Disco and Clueless have riffed on it. People tattoo it on their
bodies. A friend of mine went to a school where students were asked to sign every letter
with their names and “To thine own self be true,” even though none of them knew where
the line was from or what it meant.
What does “To thine own self be true” actually mean? Be yourself? Don’t
change who you are? Follow your own convictions? Don’t lie to yourself? Determining
the meaning of this line—and Shakespeare’s advice for young people on their way to
college— depends to some extent upon the meaning of “self,” the meaning of “true,” and
perhaps even the meaning of “meaning.”
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
As first argued by Juliet Dusinberre in Shakespeare and the Nature of Women
(1975), Shakespeare seems to have been attentive and opposed to the systematic
mistreatment of women during his age yet, whenever I think about gender in Hamlet,
something just feels wrong.1
According to the Penguin edition, there are 3,834 lines in the
play.2
Only 325 of them are spoken by women, Ophelia (170 lines) and Gertrude (155
lines), the only two women in the play out of the more than 30 characters listed in the
dramatic personae. Although roughly half of the human population is made up of women,
they make up roughly 7 percent of the characters in Hamlet and speak roughly 8 percent of
the lines in the play.
This present absence of women has led modern writers like John Updike, Lisa
Klein, and Alice Birch to reimagine the story of Hamlet from Gertrude’s or Ophelia’s
perspective.3
It has led feminist critics to ask why the role of women is so diminished in
the play. Is this evidence of sexism on Shakespeare’s part?4
Of sexism in Shakespeare’s
society?5
And what do we do with the fact that the most celebrated play in the history of
English literature systematically ignores half of humankind?6
47
14
Texts
Your text is the thing you’re interpreting, whether that “thing” is a book, idea,
action, situation, event, trend, topic, or some other social phenomenon. A
text is what’s being interpreted, and an argument is the interpretation of that
thing.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a work of art or an argumentative article, it’s still just
the thing you’re interpreting.
Use the versatility of textuality to your advantage. Focus in on exactly what
you want to interpret. This is called “defining your text.”
For example, “the television show Mad Men” is a text, as is “the character
Peggy Olson in Mad Men,” and “Peggy’s haircut in the episode ‘The Jet Set’
during season two of Mad Men,” and “the gender politics symbolized in
Peggy’s haircut in the episode ‘The Jet Set’ during season two of Mad Men.”
Or “stigma” is a text, as is “the causes and effects of stigma,” and “the social
and psychological causes and effects of the ‘ex-con’ stigma,” and “the social
and psychological causes and effects of the ‘ex-con’ stigma during the hiring
process in the southern United States.”
In the above examples, each articulation identifies something different to
address, something more specific, and thus something more likely to be
interpreted fully. The more precisely you can identify the text you’re
interpreting, the more fully you’ll be able to fulfill the promise of all
interpretation: to explain how and why something is the way that it is.
Texts
48
If you’re writing a five-page paper, your text can’t be something like
“Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Why not? Because scholars have been writing about
“Shakespeare’s Hamlet” for four centuries, and we haven’t figured it out yet.
Sorry to break the news to you, but you’re not going to interpret the entirety
of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a five-page paper.
A five-page paper might be able to offer an interpretation of something like
“the parallels in Shakespeare’s Hamlet among Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, and
Fortinbras after each experiences the death of a father.” When you scale back
the size of your promise to your reader (by narrowing your definition of your
text), you ramp up the likelihood of fulfilling that promise (by allowing
yourself to explore your text in the depth required).
Texts
49
— Practicum —
Writing a Text Statement
Define your text as clearly as possible by identifying the general and the specific
things you’ll be interpreting.
– The general sense of your text refers to the topic(s) or document(s)
under consideration.
– The specific sense is the particular examples of the topic(s) or the
particular places in the document(s).
For example, instead of saying, “This paper addresses stigma in
Shakespeare’s plays,” you might write, “Focusing on four characters—
Richard III, Shylock, Falstaff, and Caliban—this paper explores stigma in
Shakespeare’s plays.”
Or, instead of saying, “In this paper I address gun violence,” try saying,
“Focusing on the gunmen behind the tragedies in Aurora and Newtown, this
paper explores the psychology of mass murderers in twenty-first-century
America.”
Shorter papers often don’t need an explicit text statement: it suffices to
identify a question/problem (as long as the specific text—the thing being
interpreted—is clear in your statement of that question/problem). Even if the
paper doesn’t require a text statement, however, the interpretive process that
leads up to that paper depends upon a clear understanding of what is being
interpreted. Thus, you should always write a text statement, even if you
eventually determine that it’s unnecessary in your actual paper. Longer
papers (especially those involving multiple kinds of evidence) always need an
explicit text statement.
Texts
50
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Text Statement
This essay addresses Polonius, the character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and his
experience as a father.
Source
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton Shakespeare.
Third edition. Norton, 2016.
Texts
51
Into the Essay
A text statement.
A text/method statement.
A text statement combined with what’s at stake.
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
This essay considers the status of philosophy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, especially in the
famous “To be, or not to be” speech, by attending to the tension between philosophy and
drama.
From Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of
Music in Hamlet
This essay reads Ophelia’s songs in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the context of the
meaning of music established elsewhere in the play.
From Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy
This paper addresses Horatio’s emotionlessness in light of his role as a narrator, using this
discussion to think about Shakespeare’s motives for writing tragedy in the wake of his
son’s death.
52
15
Sources
There’s a difference between a text and a source. If your text is “the ghost in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” your source might be:
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by A.R. Braunmiller. Penguin,
2016.
Your text is the thing you’re interpreting. A source is a document that you’re
taking information—textual evidence—from.
Any kind of evidence you’re working with—textual, historical, scholarly—will have
a source that you’re drawing it from.
When you write a paper, sources need to be reliable and cited correctly. Your
reader should be able to track down your sources and see the information
that you’re working with.
For that reason, it is absolutely crucial that you develop a system for keeping
track of your sources. Sometimes the excitement of exploration and
interpretation leads us to shoddy records of our sources because we are so
focused on the evidence in them. But you will regret it later if you’ve got
information that you want to include in a paper and don’t know its source.
You don’t need to cite a source if your textual evidence comes from direct
experience. If, for example, you visited the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in
Stratford-upon-Avon and wanted to write a paper analyzing it, you wouldn’t
need to cite that as a source.
Sources
53
Sources and Access
In a single-source paper, all evidence comes from just that one source (and
all evidence is textual evidence). With a single-source paper, there is usually
no problem with the relationship between text and source: your source,
which you have access to, contains the evidence for your text.
Sometimes textual evidence comes from multiple sources. If your text were
“ghosts in Elizabethan revenge tragedy,” you might be using several sources:
Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus.
Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedie.
Marston, John. Antonios Reuenge.
Sometimes textual evidence comes from scholarship. If your text were
“religion in the Elizabethan age,” you might not know where to find your
textual evidence. It might be necessary to go to some scholarship that addresses
your topic, so your list of sources might look like this:
Doran, Susan. Elizabeth I and Religion 1558-1603. Routledge, 2002.
Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Translated by Frederik
Jan Hopman. Edward Arnold, 1924.
Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. Scribner, 1971.
Here Doran, Huizinga, and Thomas are your sources, but not your texts.
You’re not interpreting their books. Instead, you’re interpreting the evidence
that you have access to through their books. Your concern is the Elizabethan
Religious Settlement of 1559, not Susan Doran’s interpretation of it.
Thus, it’s important to distinguish your textual evidence (the things you’re
interpreting) from your critical scholarship (other scholars who have interpreted
the same thing as you) so that you can conduct your own analysis of the
evidence.
Even if you’re using a work of scholarship as a source for your evidence, you
should try to isolate that evidence from the scholar’s interpretation of it.
There will definitely come a time in the writing process when you’ll want to
engage with that scholar’s interpretations, but it’s key—first of all—to
identify and analyze the evidence yourself. Bracket that scholar’s
interpretation for now, so that you can develop your own original
interpretation.
With a multi-source paper, sometimes the relationship between text and
source is simple and straight-forward. For example, If you’re doing a
comparative paper, your textual evidence comes from two (or more) sources,
and you just need to make sure you have access to them all. If you’re doing a
Sources
54
lens essay or a test-a-theory essay, you’ll have one source for your textual
evidence and another for your theoretical scholarship. Just make sure you
have access. If you’re doing a historicist essay, you might have one source
that provides your textual evidence and another that provides your historical
evidence. Ensure access.
But sometimes the relationship between text and source in multi-source
papers is more complicated. Sometimes your textual evidence comes not
from a single source but from several, and you need to make sure you have
access to all those sources. Sometimes your historical evidence comes from
multiple sources. Here there’s not a single book that provides the historical
context you need but, instead, you have to pull together several sources to
generate that context.
Figure 3: Possible Relationships Between Sources and Textual Evidence
Sources
55
— Practicum —
Identifying and Accessing Sources
One key to designing a successful paper project is properly
conceptualizing what your text is, what kinds of evidence you’ll need
to interpret that text, and what sources you’ll need to collect that
evidence—then making sure you have access to your needed sources.
1. Define your text.
2. Determine if you’re doing a single-source paper, a multisource
paper, or a research paper.
3. Identify the textual evidence you will need.
4. Determine the source(s) that will supply you with the textual
evidence you need.
5. Collect that textual evidence from your source(s).
6. Avoid outside interpretations and analyze your textual
evidence directly.
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16
Orientation
In ancient cultures, the rising sun—orientem is Latin for “rising sun”—was
used to help with directions. The rising sun would let you know where you
were and which direction you were going.
Orientation in academic writing is the little bits of framing information that
help your reader understand what you’re talking about.
The two places where you usually need some orientation are (1) at the
beginning of a paper and (2) at the beginning of body paragraphs.
First, you usually need some orientation to a text, person, author, event, idea,
or tradition near the beginning of a paper as you frame your topic and
argument. Provide orientation when you are introducing an issue. Be sure to
provide the journalistic information to your reader--who? what? where?
when?
Second, you’ll often need some little bits of orientation as you work your way
through your argument, moving from one piece of evidence to another.
Provide orientation when introducing evidence: offer the bits of background
or framing information that situates the key evidence you pull out for indepth
analysis.
In your introduction, be sure to name and frame the texts and authors you’re
addressing. How you should do so will depend on your situation. If you’re
writing for Renaissance Quarterly, you don’t need to tell your readers that John
Milton was an English epic poet who lived in the seventeenth century because
the readers of that journal all know that. If you’re writing about Milton in an
Orientation
57
essay for the Journal of Modern Psychology, however, that framing material would
be helpful.
Use more orientation if you’re working with a text that isn't accessible or
familiar to your reader. Museum scholars don't need a description of the
Louvre—they know what it is, so they just need orientation to the parts
you're going to talk about. But those scholars would need more thorough
description of a new #BlackLivesMatter pop-up museum that none of them
has visited or knows about.
In general, you can assume you are writing for an “educated audience.”
Imagine someone who has been to college but has forgotten a lot of the
details. They need to be reminded of the details of any text, event, or idea,
One way to think about your reader is to imagine that it’s one of your
professors, but not the professor for whom you’re writing the paper. Imagine
your reader as educated, intelligent, and familiar with general knowledge, but
probably not the specific material that you’re writing about.
When providing orientation, think of it as “reminding” (as opposed to
“telling”) your reader about your text. Your audience has read your text, but
they need to be given some basic information when you begin your essay and
as you proceed through it.
Orientation
58
Into the Essay
Orientation to who people are.
Orientation to a quotation.
Orientation to historical evidence.
From Tragic Foundationalism
This essay puts the modern philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism into
dialogue with the early-modern playwright William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
From Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of
Music in Hamlet
Did Ophelia go to the water, or did the water come to her? That is the question asked in a
scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet usually played for laughs—the clownish, malapropistic
gravediggers debating what is and is not suicide: “Here lies the water—good. Here stands
the man – good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he
goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself.
Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life” (5.1.15-20).
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach it Like One
Suicide contagion evokes a classic debate in literary theory tinged with the rhetoric of
infection. The Greek writer Gorgias thought language could be so powerful as to exert a
drug-like control over an audience’s actions. Who could blame Helen of Troy, he asked,
when Paris’s seductive words were so strong? That’s one reason Plato banished literature
from his ideal state—“poetry deforms its audience’s minds, unless they have the
antidote”—and one reason some sought to outlaw theater in Shakespeare’s England.
According to the first anti-theatrical work published in England, John Northbrooke’s A
Treatise against Idlenes, Idle Pastimes, and Playes (1577), “Satan hath not a more
speedy way and fitter school to work and teach his desire, to bring men and women into
his snare of concupiscence and filthy lusts of wicked whoredom, than those places and
plays, and theaters are.” In the language of epidemiology, Northbrooke concludes,
“Beware of such contagiousness.” Responding to charges that literature is “the nurse of
abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires,” the most famous work of literary theory
from Shakespeare’s time, Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, acknowledged the force of
literary contagion: “Poesie [can] infect the fancy with unworthy objects.” But, Sidney
continued, “whatsoever being abused, doth most harm, being rightly used ... doth most
good.” If literature can create suicide contagion, it can also, “being rightly used,” dispel
it. That shifts the ethical burden from the text to the teachers and critics who discuss it.
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17
Evidence
Evidence is the documented information that supports your argument—facts,
dates, examples, quotations, descriptions, documents, reports, statistics, data,
charts, graphs—the basis upon which you are making your interpretive
claims. Evidence is what makes an argument true.
Derived from the Latin videre, “to see,” evidence is associated with visibility. It
is the things you see that lead you to an interpretation, and the things you
show to illustrate that interpretation to others. Faith may be “the evidence of
things not seen,” but no one will accept your argument on faith. Evidence must
be visible. Your reader needs to be able to see your evidence in your essay.
Evidence must be evident.
When working with evidence, a writer must be both a detective and a lawyer.
As a detective, you must comb through the messiness of the situation to
determine what happened. As a lawyer, you must figure out the best way to
present the facts to convince an audience to accept her interpretation of an
issue. A legal case can fall apart because evidence wasn’t properly gathered or
because it wasn’t properly presented. As a writer, you’ll need to develop good
strategies for both gathering and presenting evidence.
Gathering Evidence
You can think of evidence as all the bits and pieces that make up your text—its
component parts. After you’ve defined your text, but before you’ve started to
interpret it, you must identify, collect, and organize all the evidence you plan to
interpret. That’s your goal at this stage in your writing process: identify,
collect, and organize.
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It is crucial that you identify, collect, and organize your evidence before you
attempt to interpret it, but we humans have an alarming tendency to do our
interpretations first, and then gather up the evidence that supports them later.
Obviously this trajectory is backwards, and it usually results in a tunnelvisioned
view that only attends to the evidence that supports the preconceived
interpretation. It results in an argument that can make the evidence say
whatever the preconceived interpretation wants it to say.
Don’t hazard an interpretation until you’ve clearly mapped out the evidence
you’re planning to interpret. Along the way of writing your interpretation,
you may (and will) discover new evidence that you did not know about at the
start of your interpretation, which is fine, but you do need to begin an
interpretation by clearly demarcating the evidence to be addressed. Insight,
analysis, interpretation, and argument all depend on evidence.
The purpose of identifying, collecting, and organizing your evidence is that you
need to know the facts of the situation as exactly and as clearly as possible.
Amidst all the opinions and arguments that furiously swirl around us, you
need facts: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Your aim at this point in the process
should be to break down your text into the most simple and specific units of
evidence possible. The next step will be analysis, but for now forget about “why”
and focus on “what”: what is it that happened or happens? what are the facts?
what is the evidence to be interpreted?
The best technique you can practice is to create a timeline for each example
you’re working with, collecting the information that needs to be explained,
describing what happened, and the order in which things happened, in as
much detail as possible. When creating a timeline, you should focus on who
did what to whom when, where, and how; that is, focus on who the various
parties involved in your example(s) are, what each of these parties did, when
they did these things, where they did them, and also how they did them.
Notice that there is no “why” in this list: why people did what they did is a
matter of interpretation—analysis not evidence—and at this stage in your
thinking process you don’t want interpretation leaking into your evidence.
Another good technique for gathering evidence is to identify the most
important moment, passage, example, etc. for the issue. What evidence should
you plan to spend some time really digging into deeply?
Kinds of Evidence
There are three kinds of evidence that you might put into your essays:
Evidence
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Textual Evidence: The bits and pieces of your text that you plan to interpret,
its component parts or specific instances or the facts that, when taken
together, make up your text.
Historical Evidence: Material that comes from outside your narrowly
defined text but is nonetheless relevant to an interpretation of that text.
Scholarly Evidence: Scholarship that helps you present your argument. Under
the umbrella of Scholarly Evidence, there are three sub-types:
Critical Scholarship: A scholar who has interpreted the same text as
you, often marshaled to support analysis or argument, or used as a
counter to respond to.
Historical Scholarship: A scholar who has interpreted the historical
evidence relevant to your text, usually cited to help contextualize evidence
accurately.
Theoretical Scholarship: A scholar whose ideas (often abstract or
philosophical) help you deliver an argument, even though that scholar
doesn’t directly discuss the text or context in question.
Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence
Quantitative evidence consists of statistics and data, of numbers or “quantities”
that represent evidence related to your text. These statistics may come from
your own experiments, if you have conceived and conducted some sort of
scientific study, or they may come from scholarly articles, reports, books, and
so forth in which others publish the results of their scientific studies.
After the identification of relevant quantitative evidence comes collection and
organization. You will need to establish some sort of mechanism for
recording and displaying your statistics: usually a spreadsheet that can be
displayed as a graph or chart is your best bet.
Qualitative evidence involves not numbers and data but specific events,
examples, cases, and instances that show your text at work in the world. These
examples may come from your own experiences and observations, or from
literary sources (books, plays, poems, essays) or journalistic sources
(newspapers, television, the internet, and other media sources that report to
us behaviors and events that are in some way remarkable).
For qualitative evidence, identify, collect, and organize some examples of the
issue you plan to interpret (exactly how many examples you’ll need will
depend on the kind of writing you’re doing and its length).
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Presenting Evidence
Working with evidence helps you figure out what you’re going to argue. But
then, once you know what you want to argue, you have to think about evidence
again, in a different way, to determine the best way to present supporting
documentation for your argument.
The best way to start a paper is with some concrete evidence that receives some
quick analysis as you develop a question/problem that the essay will respond to.
The most frequent location for textual evidence is the body of a paper. Your
introduction frames the discussion with a question/problem; the body delivers
the substantive support for an argument; and the conclusion considers its
implications. Evidence will be interwoven throughout these three sections but
should be most focused in the body.
The basic progression of a body paragraph is:
– Assertion: Make an interpretive claim.
– Evidence: Present the evidence that supports your assertion.
– Analysis: Explain how your evidence supports your assertion, and
how your assertion plays a part in your argument.
Most body paragraphs that you write will be more complicated than that. It
would be weird to read a whole bunch of body paragraphs that just went
Assertion, Evidence, Analysis; Assertion, Evidence, Analysis; Assertion, Evidence,
Analysis. But that basic three-step sequence should inform the flow of your
body paragraphs.
One special kind of evidence is orientation, the little bits and pieces of
background or framing information your reader needs to understand the
evidence you’re dealing with in depth. Orientation often appears in the
introduction of an essay to cover the journalistic questions—who? what?
where? when? Orientation also appears in the body of an essay to remind your
reader of generally known information that allows you to situate the lesscommon
evidence you plan to analyze in depth.
Qualitative evidence can be presented in three ways. Quotation exactly
reproduces what someone said. Paraphrase puts someone’s statement in your
own words. Summary concisely articulates someone’s main point(s).
Sometimes, with paraphrase and summary, the line between evidence and
analysis gets blurry. Even if you’re putting something into your own words,
if you’re simply describing it, that’s evidence. The moment you start to explain
or infer from it, that becomes analysis.
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There are many other ways to present evidence. A picture reproduced for an
essay can be evidence—that is the visual equivalent of a quotation. Humans are
visual creatures. You’re welcome to include visual aids such as pictures and
charts.
A description of a picture in your own words can also be evidence—akin to
summary—provided that you are describing its features, not interpreting
them. Being able to describe something in your own words is an especially
important skill in fields that deal with non-linguistic texts, such as musicology
and art history.
Tables of data are evidence. Charts and graphs visually representing data are
also evidence. They are simply descriptions of some aspect of reality. You only
shift over into analysis when you start to interpret the evidence.
As your essay starts filling up with all the various moves you need to make in
academic writing, you may find that space becomes scarce. Often, you’ll only
have time to illustrate, not demonstrate, an analysis. To demonstrate is to
prove exhaustively. In contrast, to illustrate is to provide a concrete example.
At the same time, your reader is going to keep you accountable to the text. If
there’s relevant evidence in your text that you don’t address—whether it
supports your argument or stands against it—your reader is going to be
suspicious of your reliability as an interpreter. Representing evidence
accurately is absolutely crucial. Make sure your text actually says what you’re
saying it says.
Citation ensures the integrity of your evidence and ensures that your evidence
is coming from a reliable source.
There are different citational styles (e,g., MLA style, APA style, Chicago
style). Each style is very detailed in its citational formats, so you must consult
the appropriate style manual, but there is one basic aspect that applies to all:
a quotation should indicate the source and the page number (if available). In
your sentence, make the source you’re using clear in your introduction of a
quote. If you do so, you don’t need to state the name of the reference in your
citation, only the page number or numerical location.
Evidence
64
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Timeline
1.2.56: Polonius’s name means “Of Poland.” There are two possibilities: (1) Polonius is
from Poland; (2) Polonius was given that name for conquering Poland.
3.2.91: Polonius went to university.
3.2.91: At university, Polonius was an actor—a “good actor,” he claims. He played the
title role in Julis Caesar.
1.1.61-62: King Hamlet slaughtered a group of Polish on a frozen lake “in an angry
parle.”
4.2.118: The play’s only reference to Ophelia and Laertes’s mother. Laertes says that he
looks like his mother.
1.3.107-08: Polonius is learned and self-consciously artful in his language. He is
unusually concerned with clever speech and turns of phrases.
1.2.47-49: Claudius says that Polonius is central to the government of Denmark.
1.3.1-50: Laertes and Ophelia have a playful, affectionate repartee. They knowingly
mock their father’s overbearingness.
1.3.10-43: Laertes is a little overbearing of a brother.
1.2.51: Laertes goes off to college in France.
1.3.98-99: Hamlet starts courting Ophelia.
1.3.109-13: Hamlet’s declarations of love are sincere, according to Ophelia, who also
says they have been talking about marriage.
1.3.90-93: Hamlet and Ophelia start spending a lot of time together alone.
1.3.90-93: Polonius has heard that Hamlet and Ophelia have been spending a lot of time
together.
1.3.5-Prince Hamlet has expressed interest in Ophelia.
1..2.50-56: Laertes wishes to go back to France.
1.2.59: Laertes repeatedly petitions his father to go back to France.
1.2.58: Polonius grants Laertes’s petition to return to France, but with reservations.
1.3.1: Laertes gathers up his belongings to return to France.
1.3.82: Polonius prepares a ship with servants to take Laertes back to school in France.
1.3.5-43: Laertes tells Ophelia not to reciprocate Hamlet’s affection because he is the
Prince of Denmark, thus he cannot choose his wife, and she needs to guard her
chastity.
1.3.44-50: Ophelia mocks Laertes for telling her to be chaste while he goes off to the
licentiousness of college in France.
1.3.54: Polonius arrives and the first thing he worries about is that Laertes will miss his
ship (which is waiting on him).
1.3.54-80: Polonius gives Laertes an obnoxiously long speech of fatherly wisdom as
Laertes heads off to set sail.
1.3.87: Polonius asks Ophelia what she and Laertes were talking about.
1.3.103: Ophelia doesn’t know quite what to think of her and Hamlet’s budding
relationship, or at least that’s what she tells her father.
1.3.104-08: Polonius comes down on Ophelia hard, telling her to stay away from Hamlet.
1.3.113: Ophelia tells Polonius that she and Hamlet have talked about getting married.
1.3.114-34: Polonius erupts on Ophelia, forbidding her to see Hamlet.
1.3.35: Ophelia tells Polonius she will stop see Hamlet.
Evidence
65
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Timeline
Larson, C., & Garrett, G. (1996). Crime, justice, and society. New York, NY: General
Hall.
Students of crime quickly learn that there are nearly as many definitions of
criminology as there are criminologists. (p. 172)
Sellin, J. T. (1938). Culture conflict and crime. New York, NY: Social Science Research
Council.
The term ‘criminology’ should be used to designate only the body of scientific
knowledge and the deliberate pursuit of such knowledge. What the technical
use of knowledge in the treatment and prevention of crime might be called, I
leave to the imagination of the reader. (p. 3)
Sutherland, E. H. (1939). Principles of criminology (3rd
ed.). Chicago, IL: J. B.
Lippincott Company.
Criminology is the body of knowledge regarding crime as a social
phenomenon. It includes within its scope the processes of making laws, and of
breaking laws, and of reacting toward the breaking of laws. (p 1)
Elliott, M.A., & Merrill, F.E. (1941). Social disorganization. New York, NY: Harper and
Brothers.
Criminology may be defined as the scientific study of crime and its treatment.
Taft, D.R. (1956). Criminology. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Criminology is the study which includes all the subject matter necessary to the
understanding and prevention of crimes together with the punishment and
treatment of delinquents and criminals.
Wolfgang, M.E. (1963). Criminology and the criminologist. Journal of Criminal Law
and Criminology 54(2), 155-62. Reprinted in Ferracuti, F., & Wolfgang, M. (1967). The
subculture of violence: Towards an integrated theory in criminology. London, England:
Tavistock Publications.
The term ‘criminology’ should be used to designate a body of scientific
knowledge about crime…. We are contending that criminology should be
considered as an autonomous, separate discipline of knowledge because it has
accumulated its own set of organized data and theoretical conceptualisms that
use the scientific method, approach to understanding, and attitude in research.
(p. 155-56)
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Into the Essay
Orientation leading to evidence in the form of quotation, followed by analysis.
Evidence in the form of summary.
Quantitative evidence.
An assertion followed by evidence—some quantitative (statistics), some qualitative
(quotation)—with analysis mixed in.
From The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
Laertes is, in the clown Osric’s words, an “absolute gentleman” (5.2.93) because he is
absolutely obsessed with the honor that must be defended in the aristocratic culture of
Hamlet.
From Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy in Hamlet
Horatio tells three stories in Hamlet, two at the very beginning of the play and one at the
very end. First he tells Marcellus and Bernardo (and us in the audience) the story of King
Hamlet’s duel with Old Fortinbras; then he tells Prince Hamlet the story of the appearance
of his father’s spirit; and then he tells Young Fortinbras the story of Prince Hamlet.
From The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
The word “love” appears 84 times in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “Father” only appears 73
times, “play” 60, “think” 55, “mother” 46, “mad” 44, “soul” 40, “God" 39, “death” 38,
“life” 34, “nothing” 28, “son” 26, “honor” 21, “spirit” 19, “kill” 18, “revenge” 14, and
“action” 12.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
There just aren’t many women around in Hamlet, and they don’t say much when they
are. Claudius has 552 lines in the play, Gertrude (the analogous female character) only
157. Horatio has 294 lines, Ophelia (the analogous female character) only 173. Looking at
substantive speeches is even more telling: Claudius has 47 of his 102 speeches that run for
three or more lines (46 percent), Gertrude only 16 of her 69 speeches (23 percent). Indeed,
when Gertrude does speak, it is often for one-line affirmations of things male characters
have already said: “Ay, amen” (2.2.39), “It may be, very like” (2.2.152), “So he does
indeed” (2.2.161). As for Ophelia, her one-liners are so peppered with “my lord” (which
she says more than half the times she speaks: 30 out of 58 speeches) that they are often
only half-liners.
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Orientation followed by evidence in the form of a block quotation and then analysis.
Evidence in the form of summary with very little quotation.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
Hamlet explains that, here at midnight, the king is awake, partying, binge drinking. He’s
pounding wine. Whenever he finishes a cup, the trumpets and drums clamor:
The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail and the swaggering upspring reels,
And as he drains his drafts of Rhenish down
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge. (1.4.8-12)
The irony of Hamlet’s word “wassail,” from the Old English wes hel, meaning “be in good
health,” is that Claudius’s wassailing, which comes from a place of merriment, signifies
his poor health—his alcoholism—and contributes to his country’s decline. The trumpets
“bray[ing] out” his binge turn Claudius into a donkey, or jackass if you like. Imagine his
court around him chanting, Chug! Chug!
From Tragic Foundationalism
In Being and Event (1988), Badiou wants to understand the ontology of the “truth
process,” rather than truth per se, leading him to focus on “the knowledge/truth dialectic”
in which each constitutes the other (331). He begins with the situation, defined as a set
comprised of what is known or thought to be true: what are acknowledged to be the
elements of existence and the relationships between them? Knowledge is simply enough
the discernment, classification, and naming of what’s at hand in the situation, an
encyclopedia of the situation, as it were, defining what exists, describing the properties of
things, and explaining how they relate. This situation is static—inert, a state of being, the
status quo—until something new and unexpected occurs (akin to the “anomaly” in
Kuhn’s system): a rupture, break, disruption involving an occurrence thought to be
outside the bounds of the situation—what Badiou calls an event. Disturbing established
and circulating knowledge, the event punches a hole in the situation and requires the
formulation of a new truth identifying how the terms of the situation relate to the event.
Pointing to that realm of reality not included in the situation as previously defined—
Badiou calls that realm the void—the event creates a new way of being and conditions
how we think about everything (what Kuhn calls a “revolution”). The event becomes a
foundation of knowledge, something singular that, because of its singularity, forces us to
re-organize previous knowledge to include it in our set of things that are real. Thus, the
event is both the most particular thing that can be—a concrete happening in history—and
the most universal. The truth of this event—its inclusion in the realm of the real—is
affirmed through enthusiastic, even militant fidelity to it rather than other, ordinary,
previous knowledge. This is how Badiou defines subjectivity, which involves not human
interiority but remaining faithful to the event, bearing witness to it, deduction down from
the truth of the event, and normalization of the new truth created by it. A new situation
emerges constructed bit by bit through fidelity to the event, forging new knowledges and
new languages. In theory, this new situation has its own void—its own blindness to
certain elements of existence—which might someday break into the situation in another
event, meaning the “truth process” is never-ending.
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Quotation
When presenting evidence, know when to quote (exactly reproducing
someone’s words) and when to summarize (putting someone’s ideas in your
own words).
Quote sparingly. People read your writing to see what you have to say.
There’s often a tendency to over-quote because we want people to know that
the things we’re claiming really are supported by evidence. Evidence is
important to have but, to avoid producing a paper that is a pastiche of
quotations, you should quote sparingly and meaningfully.
Especially in shorter papers, aim to be representative as opposed to
exhaustive in your quotations. Don’t try to quote all the evidence for your
argument: doing so would leave no room for your actual argument, which should
be the focus of your paper. (Even though you might not be able to include
all the evidence that supports your argument, that argument must be accountable
to all of the evidence in your source, even if it isn’t quoted.)
Exceptions to the guideline to quote sparingly include, for example, when
you’re quoting from a manuscript in an archive that others can’t access, or
when you’ve interviewed or surveyed people. Those (and many others) are
clear cases where it’s important to give readers quotations they otherwise
wouldn’t be able to access.
Quote only when the way in which something is said—the language as
opposed to the idea—is important. If you are analyzing just the information,
not the words, then paraphrase or summarize.
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In The Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney claims that human being is
defined by a dialectic of reason and desire (22).
In The Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney imagines a contest between the
reason that makes humans like angels and the appetite that makes us
like animals: “Our erected wit maketh us know what perfection is,
and yet our infected wil keepeth us from reaching unto it” (22).
When you quote, provide orientation to your reader that contextualizes the
quotation. Also, when introducing a quote, direct your reader as to how you
want him or her to read the quoted passage: tell your reader why the way in
which the statement is made is important. Then, after you’ve given the quote,
don’t make the mistake of thinking that a quote will speak for itself. Be sure
to analyze the quoted material. The only reason to quote something is
because it needs analysis: if it doesn’t need analysis, it doesn’t need to be
quoted. This is especially true with block quotations. If you’re going to block
quote, you’ve got to give a healthy dose of analysis. If it doesn’t need all that
analysis, then it doesn’t need to be block quoted.
A philosophical account of Sidney’s Defense might point out that the
notion of an “erected wit” is a humanist commonplace, while the
notion of an “infected wil” is a Protestant commonplace. But a
rhetorical account of the Defense would also recognize that Sidney
first promises the salvation of “erected wit” and then reveals the reality
of the “infected wil.” After situating his reader in the Garden of
Eden with Adam and Eve, Sidney’s says, “Our erected wit maketh
us know what perfection is, and yet our infected wil keepeth us from
reaching unto it” (22). He leads the reader to the Mountaintop of
Hope before cascading down into the Valley of Despair.
Humankind’s “erected wit” allows them to know perfection: just as
Adam was capable of knowing perfection in the Garden of Eden,
humans in the fallen world are capable of understanding “what
perfection is.” Sidney quickly closes off the possibility of perfection,
however, by crystallizing the present reality of imperfection:
humankind’s “infected wil” prevents us from desiring what we know
to be good. Sidney does not argue that an “erected wit” is the remedy
for our “infected wil.” He says just the opposite: an “infected wil”
prevents us from following our “erected wit.” The trajectory of this
statement moves from a notion of perfection back to imperfection.
By producing the promise of perfection, then making readers suffer
the reality of imperfection, Sidney recreates the paradox of a
traditionally Christian culture like England having to account for the
emergent knowledge announced by Humanist thinkers in the
sixteenth century.
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Punctuate quotes correctly. Don’t float quotations. Make all quotes a part of
one of your own sentences by using a comma or a colon, or by making the
quote a part of your own clause. Use a comma to introduce a shorter
quotation, one that is a single sentence or less. Use a colon to introduce
longer and multi-sentence quotations, including block quotes. If a quotation
is more than one clause, it should be the last part of your sentence. Don’t
divide a sentence with a long quotation; use a colon, then let the quote end
your sentence. That is, if your quote must be set off by a comma or a colon,
it should probably end your sentence. If the quotation is more than one
sentence, you must introduce it with a colon, not a comma.
After juxtaposing our “wit” and our “wil,” Sidney proceeds to claim
that this juxtaposition “will by few be understood, and by fewer
graunted” (23).
As Philip Sidney writes, “Our erected wit maketh us know what
perfection is, and yet our infected wil keepeth us from reaching unto
it” (22).
In The Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney does not expect his insight on
the battle between will and wit to be accepted by his audience: “Our
erected wit maketh us know what perfection is, and yet our infected
wil keepeth us from reaching unto it. But these arguments will by
few be understood, and by fewer graunted” (22-23).
Even if it violates usage rules, reproduce the exact wording, spelling,
capitalization, and punctuation of the original; however, a capital or lowercase
letter at the beginning of a quotation, or punctuation at the end, can be
changed, if needed, to suit the needs of your own sentence.
If the quotation is a question or an exclamation, the quotation should include
the question mark or exclamation point.
As Sidney asks in The Defence of Poesy, “What childe is there, that
comming to a play, and seeing Thebes written in great letters upon
an old Doore, doth beleeve that it is Thebes?” (103).
For a quotation within a quotation, uses single quotation marks (‘).
According to Brain Cummings, “Calvin limited very precisely the
claims which the ‘erected wit’ may make” (269).
Block-quote when the passage is four or more lines of verse or more than
four lines of text on your page. It should be indented one inch with no
quotation marks, and your citation should follow the punctuation of the text.
Quotation
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Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” opens in the subjunctive
mood:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. (1-7)
When you are quoting less than three lines, put it in your paragraph and use
slash lines to separate lines of verse (with a space on either side of the slash).
Marvell begins by claiming, “Had we but world enough, and time, /
This coyness, lady, were no crime” (1-2).
Use an ellipsis ( … ) to indicate an omission in a quotation. Never omit
material from a quotation if the omission changes the meaning or tone of the
quotation. To omit words within a quotation, use a three-period ellipsis with
a space on both sides. To omit sentences, use a four-period ellipsis. Don’t
use ellipses at the beginning or end of a quotation.
Marvell and his lady are on opposite sides of the world: “Thou by
the Indian Ganges…. I by the … Humber” (5-7).
To substitute a word—a name for a pronoun, for example—or insert a
comment mid-quotation, enclose it in square brackets ( […] ). It is much
better to adapt your sentence to the quote than to interpolate.
It is perhaps ironic, if not cynical, that Marvell can write poetry to
“pass [his] long love’s day” (4).
You will and should find that as you do more revision on a paper you also
do less quotation. The tighter and tighter your argument gets, the more focused
the evidence to support that argument becomes. In the movement from draft(s)
to revision, be prepared to reduce quotation as you find your footing in an
argument.
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Into the Essay
Evidence in the form of quotation with analysis mixed in.
An assertion, orientation, and analysis before a block quotation, followed by evidence in
the form of summary and additional analysis.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach it Like One
Suicide contagion is especially associated with adolescence because, as Shakespeare
wrote in Hamlet, “In the morn and liquid dew of youth, / Contagious blastments are most
imminent.” Teens are “contagious” because their actions exert great influence on one
another. Shakespeare invented the word “blastments” from the earlier blasting,
“withering or shriveling up caused by atmospheric, electric, or unseen agency.”
Blastments are dangerous because they are forceful yet ephemeral, and unavoidable in
youth (“most imminent”). The same is true of the circulation of the idea of suicide in
society today, making parents everywhere jittery, especially at night when, to quote
Hamlet, “hell itself breaks out / Contagion to this world.”
From Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of
Music in Hamlet
This metaphor of music as persuasion, manipulation, seduction—pleasant sounding but not
substantive—then becomes a central symbol in the scene containing the play within the
play. In the prelude to the performance, Hamlet in conversation with Horatio uses the musical
instrument, specifically a pipe, as a metaphor for humans who allow their lives to be
controlled by external circumstances. Here an allegorized Fortune becomes a musician playing
upon a musical instrument—a human—and Hamlet measures virtue by how much we can
resist becoming that lifeless, thoughtless, manipulable instrument which only does what some
outside force makes it do:
Blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. (3.2.67-70)
Later in this scene, Shakespeare literally brought this metaphor on stage as the
performers arrive with their trumpets and drums in hand (3.2.88sd). As they play their
song, we in the audience, if we have been attentive to the meaning of music throughout
the play, should be thinking about Prince Hamlet being bandied about from pillar to post
by the external circumstances which have been hoisted upon him; fortune is the musician,
and Hamlet is the instrument being manipulated.
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Critical scholarship summarized rather than quoted.
Critical scholarship quoted (because it’s being disputed).
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
In the early-modern age, “addicted” and “addiction” did not have the medical meaning
they do today, as Jose Murgatrod Cree and Lemon have illustrated. The concept was
primarily religious, often with positive overtones. At the same time, Lemon elsewhere
shows, it is hard to read Falstaff’s famous ode to “sherris sack” as anything other than a
Shakespearean acknowledgement of alcoholism as a disease.
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
This passage is so famous that the Shakespearean scholar Douglas Bruster recently wrote
an entire book about just this one soliloquy, looking at its imagery, structure and meaning,
but also at its “philosophical force” (31), its “philosophical insight” (31) and its “chilling
philosophy” (102). Bruster concluded that the soliloquy is not about suicide, as many
modern readers, such as John Dover Wilson, believe it to be (“a like expression of utter
weariness is not to be found in the rest of human literature” [127]). On the contrary,
Bruster argued (channeling Schlegel, Coleridge and Shelley) the speech “mocks human
achievement and ability” insofar as Hamlet is trying to be philosophical but Shakespeare
was critiquing him for, in Bruster’s words, “thinking too much” (103). I do not want to wag
my finger too harshly at Bruster because his book, published in the Shakespeare Now
series, was written for a general audience, yet he did that audience a disservice when he
presented Hamlet as a failed philosopher being mocked by Shakespeare. He did that
audience an even greater disservice when, in an entire book about the “To be, or not to be”
speech, he did not take seriously the dramatic context of the speech that, as Bruster knows,
radically changes the meaning of its “chilling philosophy”.
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19
Analysis
People often think of writing as entering into debate with other writers.
That’s part of it, but the only reason to disagree with someone is because you
have a different interpretation of the matter at hand. Analysis is how you get
to your interpretation, and originality of analysis is key.
Evidence doesn’t speak for itself. Analysis explains, narrates, and unpacks the
meaning of those bits and pieces of evidence. From the Greek ana,
“throughout,” + lyein, “to unfasten,” analysis is the act of dissecting or
loosening up a topic into evidence and then describing, unpacking, and
considering the implications of the very particular meanings of each of those
very specific bits and pieces of evidence.
As with evidence, analysis appears in two stages of the writing process. Early in
the process, you do analysis to form the basis on which to develop an argument.
Later in the paper itself, you’ll present analysis in the essay to communicate
your argument to someone else.
Doing Analysis
The success of your analysis will be proportional to its specificity. The more
concrete, particular, exact you can be, the better.
The quality of your analysis is all about its originality: you bringing fresh
insight that you’ve come up with yourself.
Analysis should be technical if needed, using the vocabulary of the discipline
you’re working in. There is nothing more joyful than hearing someone with
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a strong command of a technical vocabulary elucidate something nonspecialists
may notice but don’t have the language to talk about.
Analysis makes explicit what is implicit in a piece of evidence—the hidden
things going on behind the scenes. Evidence is evident, but analysis is about
explaining what isn’t apparent.
Analyses are the most basic building blocks of arguments. Think of
argumentation as a pyramid. For each argument, there are multiple assertions;
for each assertion there are multiple analyses; and for each analysis there are
multiple pieces of evidence that support it. Evidence leads to analyses, analyses to
assertions, and assertions to an argument.
If evidence tells us what is true (what happened or happens, what the facts are),
analysis aims to explain why it is true (why something happened or happens
in the way that it did or does, why certain facts come into existence).
Explication
Explication is a method of reading literature involving detailed commentary
on each aspect of the text in question. But you can “explicate” things that
aren’t literature.
The key to explication is to attend to the formal features of a text. In literary
studies, those might be things like characters, metaphors, and themes. In a
discipline like, say, museum studies, those formal features would be things
like architecture, landscaping, docents, objects, exhibits, guest behavior,
executive board, funding, etc. To do explication, figure out the formal
concerns of the discipline you’re working in.
Makes note of surprises, patterns, parallels, and contrasts in your evidence.
If you try to make 10 observations on a key piece of evidence, it’s usually
around point number 7—after all the obvious or surface points have been
made—that some really probing and provocative reading starts to take place.
Conceptual Maps
From your work with evidence, you should have the facts you plan to work
with organized into graphs, charts, timelines, and so forth. There are different
ways to analyze this evidence. One effective strategy is to create a conceptual
map.
A conceptual map shows the relationships between facts and the concepts to
which they relate. Practically speaking, it is a bubble-and-arrow flowchart of
evidence, ideas about that evidence, and the relationships that exist between
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evidence and ideas. A conceptual map weaves together facts and concepts in
a sequence to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, a story that relates
not only what is true (in its use of facts), but also why something is true or
how it came into existence (in its use of concepts).
Conceptual maps are about increasing the clarity and specificity of your
thinking. Producing a conceptual map will allow you to see the complexity of
the evidence you’re addressing with clarity because it will require you to think
about very particular points of evidence in very specific analytical terms.
To create your map, attempt to determine what causes a fact to occur and
what a fact causes to occur. Remember that sometimes multiple facts or
concepts combine to produce a single fact or concept, and sometimes a single
fact or concept can cause multiple other facts or concepts to occur. Start
piecing together your conceptual map by plotting facts into episodes that go
together to form chapters, as it were, of the larger narrative you’re trying to
tell.
As you start plotting out your facts and concepts, be aware that you will have
to draw and redraw your map many times because you are actually figuring
out your analysis of the evidence as you map it out. You are not putting together
a puzzle the completed version of which is printed on the box. You are
putting together a puzzle but have no idea what the completed picture will
look like. As you work to piece this puzzle together, you will have to scratch
out sequences that you thought would work but don’t; you will have to begin
again from scratch when things aren’t working; and you will have to do all of
this until all the pieces in your puzzle finally click together and the facts and
concepts form a coherent picture because you have placed them in cogent
relationships with each other.
At the end of it all, a conceptual map should show the origin, structure,
operation, and outcome of a set of evidence.
Because a conceptual map is an argument (or part of an argument) in its
infancy, your conceptual map is usually not something that anyone other than
you can make sense of just by looking at it. The best use of a conceptual map
is to “talk someone through” an analysis. For this reason, it is helpful to
include with a completed conceptual map a written statement that
summarizes the idea.
Presenting Analysis
Let’s say you go on vacation and take 250 pictures. When you get home, you
want to make a photo album. You don’t put all 250 of those pictures in the
photo album. You pick the best 25. But here’s the thing: you wouldn’t have
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those 25 really great pictures if you hadn’t taken all 250. And you didn’t know,
when you were taking the pictures, which 25 would be the best.
Similarly, in the writing process, there will be a lot of analysis that you do along
the way that may not make it into the final essay. Don’t think of that as wasted
work. You don’t know, while you’re in the interpretive process, which
analyses are going to be the ones that best display your argument. And often
the analyses that make it into an essay wouldn’t have been possible without all
of that earlier analysis. No one goes on vacation and takes only 25 pictures.
As mentioned in the section on Evidence, the standard flow of a body
paragraph is:
– Assertion: Make an interpretive claim.
– Evidence: Present the information that supports your assertion.
– Analysis: Explain how your evidence supports your assertion, and
how your assertion plays a part in your argument.
Note that assertions are really just analysis delivered before rather than after
evidence.
Usually, the first half of the body of an essay is front-loaded with more
evidence, less analysis. Then the second half shifts to less evidence, more analysis.
When revising a paper, you’ll probably (hopefully) find that you’re able to
trim out extraneous analysis so that your essay moves as quickly and directly
as possible to its central argument.
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— Practicum —
Creativity for Analysis
Readers often ask a writer to “deepen the analysis,” but what does that
even mean? Usually, it means that the points in a paper should go beyond
the obvious. But how do you get beyond the obvious?
If you’re trying to brainstorm ideas for analysis, try doing something
creative with your evolving interpretation.
– Create Some Analogies: Identify similar stories, people, and situations
that you’re familiar with—whether it’s from your daily life or the
news or your previous studies. Import your thoughts and feelings
related to those familiar, accessible things into your attempt to find
your footing in the text you’re analyzing.
– Cast Roles: What actors would you cast to play the various roles
involved in the text you’re analyzing?
– Personalize It: Where do you see your own experiences, identities,
interests, values, beliefs, fears, and obsessions showing up in your
text?
– Adapt the Text: If you were to produce or adapt this material in a
different setting, how would you do it?
– Create Listicles: What are the Top 3 Terrible Decisions in the
material you’re looking at? Five hilarious things about this text!
The 10 most important words in the text.
– Meme the Material: “How it started / How it’s going.”
– Create Some Art: Do a drawing, painting, sculpture, or performance
based on your developing ideas about this material.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Explication
QUEEN [restraining him] Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries “Cuckold!” to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother. (4.2.114-18)
1. This is the only reference to Laertes and Ophelia’s mother in the play.
2. It seems most likely that Laertes and Ophelia’s mother is dead. That’s not a
complete certainty. She could be alive and just never present.
3. Ophelia’s mother being absent creates a tough dynamic when Hamlet starts
professing his love for her. Ophelia doesn’t have a mom to talk to.
4. It seems that, when Laertes says, “Even here,” he points to his forehead, between his
two [eye]brow[s].”
5. When Laertes points to his forehead, however, he doesn’t say “my brow.” He refers
to “the chaste unsmirchèd brow / Of my true mother.” Laertes seems to be saying
that his brow looks like his mother’s brow.
6. If Laertes looks like his mother, that could create a certain bond between Polonius,
who lost his wife, and Laertes, who looks like her.
7. Laertes is saying that, if he were to calm down, it would be an insult to his father
and mother, whom he clearly holds in reverence.
8. The fact that Laertes’s mom isn’t around makes the loss of his father that he’s
dealing with in this scene even tougher.
9. The absence of Ophelia and Laertes’s mother invites us to posit a series of
hypothetical scenarios about what role she may have had in her family’s lives. Was
she from Poland, as Polonius seems to be, based on his name? Did she know
Polonius when he was at university? Did she die giving birth to Ophelia? Or did she
die later in life? If later, do her children remember her? How did they process their
grief at such a young age?
10. Maybe Polonius processed the loss of his wife by throwing himself into his work,
and that’s why he’s so well-liked by King Claudius.
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Into the Essay
An assertion, block quotation, and analysis of it.
An assertion, orientation, evidence in the form of quotation, and analysis using the
technical terms (“imagery”) of the discipline at hand (literary studies).
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
In his very first scene, Hamlet is explicitly concerned with what he is, not what he seems to
be. “I know not seems”, he says to his mother after she asks why his father’s death “seems” so
“particular” with him:
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good-mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief
That can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem’,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show –
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (1.2.75–86)
This is a Hamlet who cannot act; or, rather, this is a Hamlet who acts exactly as he is. His
semblance and his essence are exactly the same, he says, except that his internal state,
“that within”, is even more real, even more in existence than his considerable display or
“show” of mourning. For this Hamlet, “action” is “play”, Shakespeare using the language
of drama here to distinguish Hamlet from an actor who pretends and to characterise
Hamlet as a man who is, as a man who has “within” him something real and true –
something more real and more true than the performance of grief, which is denigrated as
“the trappings and the suits of woe”. This Hamlet is not acting sad; he is sad. He is
concerned with truth, with what “can denote [him] truly”, with that which is in contrast to
that which appears. Ham- let is not doing metaphysics in this speech, of course: in
Heidegger’s terms (Being and Time 31), he is being “ontical” (concerned with the
essential attributes of things) but not “ontological” (concerned with being-qua-being).
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach it Like One
One way Shakespeare conveyed suicide contagion was to fill Hamlet’s suicidal thoughts
with water and plant imagery that reappears in his girlfriend Ophelia’s death by suicide.
The first line of Hamlet’s first soliloquy points forward to the last moments of Ophelia’s
life: “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.”
The soliloquy is filled with “tears,” which water the “unweeded garden” that Hamlet
compares his country to. Water imagery rushes back into Hamlet’s most famous
soliloquy, “To be, or not to be,” which flails in his “sea of troubles” and barrels toward
suicide until “currents turn awry.”
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An assertion followed by evidence mixed with orientation and analysis.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determination
Hamlet is filled with fate, starting in the first scene. The Ghost is a “portentous figure”
(1.1.108) who “bodes some strange eruption to our state” (1.1.68). Horatio compares it to
omens preceding Julius Caesar’s death, “precurse of feared events, / As harbingers
preceding still the fates / And prologue to the omen coming on” (1.1.120-22), then asks
the Ghost to foretell the future, “if thou art privy to thy country’s fate” (1.1.132). These
passages bookend the story of Young Fortinbras’s campaign against Denmark, which
culminates in the final scene of the play. Symbolically, the armored Ghost in the first
scene points forward to the national, military tragedy of the last scene even if, more
literally, the Ghost points backward to Claudius’s crime against King Hamlet. Oddly,
Shakespeare characterized the Ghost as Prince Hamlet’s “fate”: “My fate cries out”
(1.4.81), he howls, following the Ghost into the unknown. What does that mean? How
can a Ghost pointing to the past be “fate”? For starters, the revenge the Ghost assigns to
Hamlet is a dooming of sorts. The catastrophe that ends the play is the outcome of the
Ghost that begins it.
From The Meaning of Death in Hamlet
To test my hypothesis, I created a system for scoring the spectacularity of a death and the
severity of a hamartia. First I scored the place of death according to its visibility: +1 for
off-stage and +2 for on-stage. Then I scored the manner of death according to its
brutality: +1 for suicide, +2 for poisoning, +3 for stabbing or any other weaponed assault.
Then I combined the scores for visibility and brutality to generate a score for
the spectacularity of a character’s death. Next I scored each character’s hamartia
according to its severity: +1 for pride, +2 for incest, +3 for deceit, +4 for revenge, and +5
for ambition. The results of this analysis appear in Table 2 and are charted in Figure 1.
Table 2: Severity of Hamartia and Spectacularity of Death in Hamlet
Character Severity of Hamartia Spectacularity of
Death
King Hamlet 1 2
Polonius 3 3.5
Ophelia 2 2
Gertrude 4 4
Laertes 7 7
Claudius 8 7
Hamlet 7 7
Ros and Guil 3 4
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Quantitative analysis.
Figure 1: Severity of Hamartia and Spectacularity of Death in Hamlet
This analysis revealed that the spectacularity of a character’s death in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet is proportionate to the severity of his or her hamartia. The greater a character’s
faults or errors are, the more visceral his or her death will be. What this means is that
Shakespeare found a specifically dramatic way to symbolize character at the intersection
between plot and spectacle. Beyond simply confirming that character is destiny in
Shakespearean tragedy, this analysis suggests, more specifically, that hamartia is
catastrophe. Here, instead of Aristotle’s emphasis on the difference between the severity
of the hamartia and that of the catastrophe, Shakespeare created a similarity between the
severity of the hamartia and the spectacularity of the catastrophe. This argument suggests
that, when Shakespeare asked himself the very practical artistic question of how he
should write a character’s death, he looked back upon the way he wrote that character’s
life. Or, perhaps even more plausibly, when Shakespeare knew how a character was
going to die, he allowed it to inform the way he wrote out the character’s actions.
y = 0.8299x + 0.8975
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
0 2 4 6 8 10
SpectacularityofDeath
Severity of Hamartia
Four
Argument
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20
Method
The below painting, Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, is what is called an
anamorphic image.
Figure 4: Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors (1533)
Method
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As you look around the image, it seems pretty standard, until you get to the
strange oval object at the bottom-center of the painting. It seems to be an
indecipherable blob. If, however, you place your eyes at the bottom of this
oval, tilt the image away from you, and look diagonally across the oval, the
oval object starts to take the shape of something we recognize. The image is
called anamorphic because it changes when you look at it from a different
angle. When you adjust your perspective, that blob is rendered
comprehensible as a skull.
Sometimes, all you need in order to make sense of something that seems
incoherent and meaningless is to look at it from the right angle.
In academic writing, the texts you interpret can be anamorphic as well.
Documents and information that at first seem incoherent and meaningless
can be rendered comprehensible if looked at from the right angle. The way
in which you look at the object of your interpretation—the approach you
take—is called your method.
From the Greek μετα, “after,” + ὁδός, “path, way,” your method is the path
upon which you travelled (or plan to travel) to reach your destination, your
destination being your argument.
There is a close relationship between text, method, and argument. If your text is
the thing you're interpreting, and your argument is your interpretation of that
thing, then your method is the way in which you went about your interpretation
of your text in order to arrive at your argument.
Method is not a what but a how. What you want your reader to understand is
your argument; how you have gone about your interpretation, or how you’re
going to persuade your reader to accept it, is your method.
Usually, your method stems from how many sources you’re using and how the
various fields of evidence in an essay are related. Some possible methods include:
– A Close Reading Essay: A single-source paper addressing the meaning
and significance of one text.
– A Theorization Essay: A single-source paper that uses a discussion of
a particular example to develop a generalizable theory.
– A Historicist Essay: A multi-source consideration of a text in light of
historical circumstances relevant to the way it came into existence.
– A Comparative Essay: A multi-source consideration of similar texts,
ideas, events that come from different contexts.
Method
89
– A Lens Essay: The use of one text or idea (usually philosophical or
theoretical in nature) to unpack and explain a particular example or
set of data.
– A Test-a-Theory Essay: The use of an example or data set to evaluate
(and potentially improve) a general philosophical or theoretical idea.
– A Presentist Essay: The use of a historical text or idea to unpack and
discuss a recent text or idea.
Your discussion of your method is, most importantly, the place to acknowledge
your theoretical community, which consists of any philosophers or theorists
who have influenced the way you’re interpreting your text(s). Sometimes you
can interpret a text on your own, by looking at evidence, analyzing that
evidence, making inferences, and drawing conclusions; sometimes you have
recourse—either during the act of interpretation (i.e., when reading a text),
or in the course of articulating that interpretation (i.e., when writing a
paper)—to abstract ideas, conceptual models that elucidate a certain kind of
problem. A paper includes a significant theoretical component when it uses
abstract ideas to make sense of particular facts.
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— Practicum —
Diagramming Your Evidence
On a blank sheet of paper, draw a large circle in the middle.
Text: At the top of the circle, identify what you’re interpreting.
Textual Evidence: Inside the circle, list your key pieces of evidence.
NOTE: All papers have a text and textual evidence. Not all papers have the
below kinds of evidence. A single-source paper will only include textual evidence,
while a multi-source paper has additional kinds.
NOTE ALSO: You may be able to include the specific sources you’re planning to
use but—especially early in the writing process—you may only be able to include
“placeholder categories” that identify the topics you’re planning to address.
Historical Evidence: To the left of the circle, note any information you’re
bringing into your project that falls outside the scope of your text yet
influenced the way it came into the world or helps you explain it.
Historical Scholarship: To the bottom-right of the circle, note any
scholarship you’re bringing in to help you explain your historical evidence.
Theoretical Scholarship: To the top-right of the circle, note any theories or
ideas serving as a lens for interpreting your text / textual evidence.
Critical Scholarship: To the center-right of the circle, note any scholarship
you’re bringing in that analyzes the same topic, text, or textual evidence
that you’re addressing (or something similar).
Looking at your diagram of evidence, determine your method. You may
need to think about other elements, such as what you might do with your
implications.
Write a text/method statement naming what you’re interpreting and how.
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91
Into the Essay
Method statement from the introduction; analysis with theoretical scholarship from the
body.
Text / method statement with an indication of what’s at stake.
From Tragic Foundationalism
This essay puts the modern philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism into
dialogue with the early-modern playwright William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Doing
so allows us to identify a new candidate for Hamlet’s traditionally hard-to-define
hamartia—his “tragic mistake”—but it also allows us to consider the possibility of
foundationalism as hamartia.
…
Foundationalism is tragic in Hamlet because it produces that key element in hamartia:
ignorance. Hamlet’s hamartia does not flow from ignorance, as Aristotle would have it.
Hamlet has just learned the secret truth of his father’s murder. Hamlet’s hamartia flows
from truth. But, just as Badiou argues that an event creates a subject, the revelation of the
truth about his father’s murder creates ignorance in Hamlet. By wiping his “table” of
prior experience and belief clean, Hamlet’s foundationalism creates a strategic ignorance
to empirical, rational, philosophical, historical, and even emotional knowledge because
the truth process has purportedly reached its goal and no longer needs to operate. In place
of the small, portable, erasable, temporary device of the “table,” Hamlet plans to write
the Ghost’s commandment in something larger, permanent, and enduring—a “book.” It
would be remarkably short. What it lacked in coverage, it would make up for in clarity.
Imagine your entire library wiped out of existence and replaced with one book with one
word: “Revenge.”
From The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
Looking at Hamlet from our place at Harvard can bring us to see what a tangled knot
honor can be, and we can start to theorize the difference between heroic and tragic honor.
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Terms
Your terms are the concepts that are doing a lot of interpretive work in your
argument.
Often, when we hear “terms,” we think about words that need definition. In
academic writing, however, it’s usually about concepts that need discussion.
Key terms don’t have to be the big, important-sounding words. Your key terms
are the ones that are central to the claims you’re making in your argument.
Sometimes, it is necessary to define what you mean by a given term. There are
four key strategies:
– Self-Definition: “By irony, I mean…”
– Dictionary Definition: “The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1566 as
the first instance of irony meaning…”
– Etymology: “The English word irony comes from the Greek eiron,
meaning…”
– Theoretical Scholarship: “Richard Rorty defines irony as…”
Your discussion of terms need not be a definition of terms. For example, if you
were to address the question of mimesis in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you would
need to define what mimesis is, “the representation of reality,” but you might
also need to discuss the relationship between art and nature; you would not
need to give definitions of art and nature because everyone knows what those
are, but you would need to provide an overview of the conceptual situation,
i.e. art is supposed to reflect nature, but it doesn’t do so exactly, and so forth.
Terms
93
As much as possible, draw your terms from your text. Unless you can justify
it, don’t import terms from elsewhere to interpret a text that might not be
operating in those terms.
At the same time, one of the justifications for doing a multi-source essay is
that bringing in an additional source provides helpful terms for explaining
what is going on in the initial source.
It’s often effective to discuss terms before delivering a thesis. The idea is that
those terms can then serve as shorthand: you can explain in detail what you
mean by a given term, and then you can use that term whenever you need,
especially in your thesis, without having to explain yourself every time.
Discussing key terms before delivering a thesis allows you to provide a thesis
statement that is both brief and meaningful: brief because its use of terms
already discussed makes it sharp, clear, and concise, thus crisp and
memorable; and meaningful because the thesis points back to a nuanced
discussion of terms.
Sometimes, your thesis is the suggestion of a new term. If so, then your
discussion of terms should come after your thesis, not before.
But don’t do a big download of terms all at once: Ahem, here are the five key terms
in play in my paper, and I’m going to identify every term and define it here because this is
the section in which I’m defining my terms. It feels too mechanical. Introduce and
discuss key terms as they arise organically throughout the essay.
A common move to make in conclusions is to theorize your argument
outward into an abstract idea. If you do so, be sure to come up with a good
term or phrase to capture your theorization.
In a literature review, it is often helpful to narrate the previous scholarship
on a topic by grouping arguments into "camps," and giving a term to each
camp.
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— Practicum —
Identifying Your Key Terms
The questions below are designed to help you figure out the terms that
are doing a lot of interpretive work in your argument.
1. Read through your argument statement and list out the main topics
(things you are making claims about) and concepts (ideas you’re using
to make claims).
2. From your list, select five key terms—these are basically just the
words that you know will definitely need to be in your thesis.
3. Sometimes, writing a thesis is simply about figuring out the shortest
way to articulate the relationships among your key terms. To do so,
draw a quick conceptual map.
– Aim to establish links of causality and chronology: who or what
brings who or what into existence?
– Note that, chronologically, motives for doing something come
before strategies for doing it. And strategies come before the
thing itself. Establish the order in which your key terms come
into play and act upon each other.
– You may find that you need to add new key terms to describe the
nature of the relationships.
4. Using your conceptual map, write out a thesis. Shorter is better. Try
doing it in one sentence.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Key Terms
Polonius
Shakespeare
Hamlet
Single Father
Work-Life Balance
Relatable
Thesis: In contrast to the image of a bumbling old fool that audiences love to hate, Polonius is
surprisingly relatable and sympathetic in the twenty-first century as a single father struggling with
work-life balance.
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Into the Essay
Key terms used in a thesis statement.
Key terms used in a thesis statement and the stakes.
Question/problem leading into a discussion of terms (using etymology) that are then used
for a thesis.
From The Meaning of Death in Hamlet
There exists in Hamlet a positive correlation between the severity of a character’s
hamartia and the “spectacularity” of his or her death—that is, the extent to which it is
presented as a visible and visceral spectacle on-stage.
From The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
The world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized
version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of
fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls
into question the freedom of the individual will. As such, Shakespeare’s Hamlet both
commented on the transformation of pagan fate into Christian providence that happened
in the centuries leading up to the play, and anticipated the further transformation of fate
from a theological to a sociological idea, which occurred in the centuries following
Hamlet.
From The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
Every semester at the start of my first-year writing class, called Why Shakespeare?,
students affirm the Harvard honor code. I must admit to feeling slightly awkward when
they do because, in stark contrast to life at Harvard, a code of honor is quite problematic
in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Honor in Hamlet works like its Latin etymon, honor, “esteem,
respect,” a sense which is all about the opinions of others, something external, not any
“integrity” that belongs to the individual. According to the Oxford English Dictionary,
both senses of honor were in circulation in Shakespeare’s England, the external sense of
“great respect, esteem” coming into usage around 1225, and the internal sense of “a fine
sense of, and strict adherence to, what is considered to be morally right or just” around
1300. But instead of “the foundation of our community” that it is at Harvard, honor is
tragic in Hamlet. For Hamlet and Laertes, the quest to preserve the respect for their
names results in catastrophe for themselves, their families, and the nation.
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Extended discussion of a key term.
Key terms used to structure an argument statement.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
Suicide contagion is the term social scientists use to describe exposure to
suicide or suicidal thoughts resulting in an increase of suicidal behavior. While media
coverage has recently heightened concern about the phenomenon, it has been observed
for centuries. One term for suicide contagion is the Werther Effect, named after Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), a Romantic German
novel about a lovesick young artist who takes his own life. An international bestseller
partly based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the book’s fame led to a rise in young people
imitating Werther’s suicide, dressing in his trademark outfit or holding Goethe’s book for
their fateful act.
Suicide contagion is a special case of the general phenomenon of social
modeling or social learning, where humans follow examples more than rules. The initial
exposure can come either directly (someone you know dies by suicide) or indirectly
(media reports on suicide). Sometimes suicide is glamorized through its association with
a successful, attractive, larger- than-life celebrity, like Robin Williams, Kate Spade, or
Anthony Bourdain. Such exposure, especially with an emphasis on the cause and manner
of death, makes suicide real, creating new ideas about suicide or triggering pre-existing
thoughts, modifying a person’s understanding of typical social behavior, making it seem
like an acceptable method of responding to stress, and loosening the restraint we usually
exercise with harmful acts.
From How Hamlet Works
There exists an economic relationship of supply-and-demand that explains Hamlet’s
popularity. But what does Hamlet offer, and what market demand does that offering
satisfy? The three most compelling possibilities are what I call the thematic answer, the
theatrical answer, and the philosophical answer. The thematic answer is that, as the
English language’s best artwork about death—one of the very few universal human
experiences in a modern world increasingly marked by cultural differences—Hamlet is
always timely and therefore timeless. The theatrical answer is that, with its mixture of
tragedy and comedy, the role of Hamlet requires an extremely good actor—often the best
actor of each age—and the play’s popularity derives from the celebrity of its stars. The
philosophical answer is that Hamlet invites, encourages, facilitates, and sustains
philosophical introspection and conversation from people who do not usually do such
things, who find themselves doing those things with Hamlet, who sometimes feel
embarrassed about doing those things, but who ultimately find the experience of having
done them rewarding.
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Extended discussion of terms that are then used in a thesis statement.
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
What was Shakespeare saying about philosophy? I address this question by
attending to the differences between philosophy and drama. On the most basic level,
philosophy is about knowing while drama is about doing: these words come from the
Greek σοφία, “wisdom”, and δρᾶν, “to do”. More specifically, the start of Hamlet’s
soliloquy, “To be, or not to be”, invokes the form of philosophy called ontology, derived
from the Greek ὀντο-, “being”. Ontology is, in Martin Heidegger’s definition, “that
theoretical inquiry which is explicitly devoted to the meaning of entities” (Being and
Time 32): the study of being-qua-being. Incidently, the word ontology (or rather,
ontologia) was coined by Shakespeare’s German contemporary Jacob Lorhard in 1606,
just a few years after Hamlet was first staged. Lorhard used the term ontology
interchange- ably with the term metaphysics, and Shakespeare would have thought
about the concerns of ontology in terms of Aristotlean metaphysics, the study of first and
supreme causes and principles, superna- tural and supersensible substance and structure,
that which does not change, which remains true in all times in all places. Metaphysics
was set off against both natural philosophy, with its theoretical attention to sublunary
matters, and ethical philosophy, with its practical concern for virtuous action. With these
distinctions in mind, we can note that what Critchley and Webster called Hamlet’s “ontological
question” (11) is really an ethical question veiled in the language of ontology, as
registered in Heidegger’s retort to Hamlet: “Why are there beings at all instead of
nothing? That is the question” (Introduction to Metaphysics 1). Thus, Hamlet’s
soliloquy invokes both metaphysical philosophy (in its language of “being”) and ethical
philosophy (in its concern with “action”).
Like ethics, drama is about action, but drama is also about acting. Hamlet
draws much of its energy from the tension between the ethical action the protagonist
wants to take and the theatrical acting he does instead. As James Calderwood emphasised
in his reading of Hamlet, drama allows an actor “to be and not to be” a character; a play
operates simultaneously as dramatic illusion and thea- trical reality in ways quite foreign
to the quest for the fundamental nature of reality in metaphysics. Thus, the basic dramatic
phenomenon of acting has historically been a spur in the side of philosophy, going back
to Plato, as Jonas Barish discussed in The Antitheatrical Prejudice: “The key terms are
those of order, stability, constancy, and integrity, as against a more existentialist
emphasis that prizes growth, process, exploration, flexibility, variety and versatility of
response. In one case we seem to have an ideal of stasis, in the other an ideal of
movement” (117). Philosophy and drama are by no means antithetical, but the “ideal of
stasis” in metaphysics and the “ideal of movement” in drama generate “fundamentally
different types of endeavour” with different assumptions and motives, as Martin Puchner
argued when unpacking “the anti-theatrical prejudice in philosophy and the antiphilosophical
prejudice in theatre” (541).
I want to suggest that Shakespeare did not care about the questions of
metaphysical philosophy, and that he satirised metaphysics in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to
be” speech because he thought acting was more important than being. That is,
Shakespeare valued human action and interaction, including the social roles we perform
like actors playing characters on a stage, over abstract knowledge about existence
generated through theoretical reasoning.
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Extended discussion of a key term that is then used for analysis in a body paragraph.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
Unconscious bias – the notion that we can harbor and practice prejudice and
discrimination which we are unaware of, even if we despise and resist bigotry – has
emerged as a prominent concern in recent social scientific research, led by Mahzarin
Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald.1
This field of inquiry originates in the observation
that much of human history involves claims that one tribe, one religion, one race, one
nation, one gender, one sexual orientation, and so forth – in short, one identity – is better
than another. Of course, mine is always better than yours: narcissism (love of the self)
easily spills over into bigotry (hatred of the other). In highly developed nations such as
the twenty-first-century United States, however, overt bigotry is declining because (in
philosophical terms) we lack any sort of universal criteria by which we might evaluate
the intrinsic worth of one identity over another, and (in more practical terms) prejudice
and discrimination are now widely frowned upon if not railed against in public.
Admittedly, the resurgence of openly racist, sexist, ableist, and classist rhetoric in the
Trump era leaves us uncertain about future directions of this trend. In most quarters,
however, explicitly bigoted groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Westborough
Baptist Church are seen as fringe movements full of loonies. Thus, in the United States
today, the problems of prejudice and discrimination are largely unspoken; they are to be
found in the way American society is structured and operates. Women make less money
than men who do the same jobs. Black men get longer prison sentences than white men
who commit the same crimes. Why do these social injustices persist? It’s not because of a
widespread belief in the superiority of men over women and whites over blacks, as was
once the case. Instead, that history of prejudice and discrimination, even though it has
been widely disavowed, has resulted in the social empowerment of men and whites over
women and blacks. Those in power, even if they abhor bigotry, hold unconscious biases
in favor of their own, resulting in a tension, Banaji and Greenwald write, “between our
intentions and ideals, on one hand, and our behavior and actions, on the other.” Structural
inequality engenders unconscious bias; unconscious bias fosters structural inequality.
Unconscious bias is different from the misogyny and patriarchy more easily
identifiable in Hamlet. Hamlet’s overt misogyny – “Frailty, thy name is woman,” he
fumes in his first soliloquy (1.2.147), projecting his anger over his mother’s hasty
remarriage into an indictment of all womankind – serves Shakespeare’s characterization
of Hamlet’s mental and emotional disturbance at the start of the play. Polonius’s
patriarchal parenting – the double standard which turns Laertes loose to be true to his
own self in France but domineers every aspect of Ophelia’s life in Denmark in an effort
to maintain her honor – is part of Polonius’s characterization as a buffoon. In Hamlet,
misogynists are mentally disturbed, patriarchs are fools, and misogyny and patriarchy are
configured together with tragedy. Hamlet’s pain, suffering, and sorrow upon his father’s
death and his confusion, disappointment, and anger about his mother’s remarriage trigger
his madness, while Polonius’s oppression of Ophelia sows the seeds of her madness and
death: she is dominated and directed by men her whole life so, when she loses all the men
in her life (Laertes goes off to France, Hamlet rejects her, Polonius dies), she goes
mad. She literally loses her mind insofar as she loses access to the men who had done all
her thinking for her (as epitomized in her heartbreaking line, “I think nothing, my lord”
[3.2.113]). Both the perpetrators and the victims of sexism die in Hamlet because sexism
is part and parcel of the ideology Shakespeare critiqued, rejected, and suggested leads to
tragedy. The cultural prestige of male warriors in medieval feudalism spawned the
patriarchal culture of honor symbolized by King Hamlet and his machismo: patriarchy
and misogyny are local manifestations of the culture of honor that, in Shakespeare’s
dramatic vision, ends in tragedy.
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Theorizing a new term in the implications.
From Tragic Foundationalism
Tragic foundationalism is the notion that fidelity to a single and substantive truth at the
expense of an openness to evidence, reason, and change is an acute mistake which can
lead to miscalculations of fact and virtue that create conflict and can end up in
catastrophic destruction and the downfall of otherwise strong and noble people.
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Logic
From the Greek logos, “reason,” logic is the study of our methods for
evaluating whether the premises of an argument adequately support its
conclusion.
In formal logic, both premises and conclusions are called statements. A
statement is a sentence that is either true or false. For example, the statement
“All men are mortal” is either true or false.
A premise is a statement on the basis of which a conclusion is affirmed. That
is, premises lead to conclusions. For example, “All men are mortal. Socrates is a
man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.”
A conclusion is a statement affirmed on the basis of some premises. That is,
conclusions follow from premises. For example, “All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.”
In formal logic, an argument is a set of statements, one of which, the
conclusion, is affirmed on the basis of the others, the premises.
All arguments have two basic properties: validity and soundness. Validity
concerns the truth of the conclusion in relation to the premises. Soundness
also concerns the truth of the premises in relation to the world.
An argument is valid when its premises support its conclusion: if the premises
are true, then the conclusion is true. An argument is invalid when the
conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises: the premises may
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102
be true, and the conclusion may be true, but the conclusion is not the
necessary consequence of the premises.
Valid: All biologists are scientists. John is not a scientist. So, John is
not a biologist.
Invalid: All biologists are scientists. John is not a biologist. So, John
is not a scientist.
An argument is sound when its premises support its conclusions and those
premises are true: evidence affirms the truth of the premises, and the
premises affirm the truth of the conclusion. An argument is unsound when
the premises are false. Note that an argument can be valid but not sound: it
can be logical but not true; however an argument cannot be sound but not
valid: validity implies soundness.
Sound: All collies are dogs. All dogs are animals. So, all collies are
animals.
Unsound: All collies are cats. All cats are animals. So, all collies are
animals.
Deductive logic is the part of logic that concerns validity. Deductive logic uses
general statements to arrive at a specific statement. For example, “All men
are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.”
Inductive logic is that part of logic that concerns soundness. Inductive logic uses
specific statements to construct or evaluate general statements. For example,
“Socrates has a beard. Socrates stands when he pees. Socrates likes beer and
football. Socrates won’t ask for directions. Therefore, Socrates is a man.”
Conditional statements describe cause and effect. They usually take the form of
“if-then” statements. In a conditional, the if-clause is called the antecedent, and
the then-clause is called the consequent.
If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the
presence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.
If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the
presence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus, the
presence of y does not imply the presence of x.
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Argument
You probably know that a paper is supposed to have a “thesis statement.”
You may have been told to state your thesis in your introduction, and then to
restate it in different words in your conclusion. Perhaps your reaction is
something like: Why didn’t you just read my thesis the first time around when I said it
exactly how I wanted to say it?
The suggestion that you “restate your thesis in different words” comes from
a failure to differentiate between a thesis and an argument.
A thesis statement is a short (one- or two-sentence) statement of the main
point of a paper.
An argument statement is a longer (one- or two-paragraph) summary of the
ideas at work behind a thesis statement, a synthesis of the evidence and
analysis presented in an essay.
An argument is a detailed overview of the components, structure, and
operation of an idea. A thesis is an easily accessible report of the main point
of that idea.
Your thesis should make a single point. It is the one thing you want your reader
to understand, even if that “one thing” has many moving parts. Your argument
is a description of all of those parts.
Which comes first, the thesis or the argument? It depends. In terms of the
sequence of your research process, your argument comes before your thesis.
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You have to develop an understanding of the complex set of ideas that you
wish to present (your argument) before you write a short statement of your
central take-away (your thesis).
In terms of the structure of your paper, however, your thesis comes before
your argument. You should give a short articulation of your main point (your
thesis) early in your paper to serve as a guiding light for your reader, while the
longer overview of all the ideas behind your proposition (your argument) will
come later in your paper to serve as a synthesis for your reader.
What makes an argument good? It brings clarity to complexity through
specificity and intellectual riskiness.
The ideas you’re writing about should be complex (if they’re simple, we don’t
need an essay about them), but your argument should be crystal clear.
An argument should be bold, daring, risk-taking, not obvious or dispassionate.
When writing a paper, take a moment to ask yourself, “Is this really what I
want to argue?” Do you have an argument that you’re passionate about, that
you’re invested in, or are you just going through the motions to fulfill an
assignment?
Remember that intellectual breakthroughs only come when intellectual risks
are taken.
Kinds of Arguments
The German writer Karl Marx famously said, “The philosophers have only
interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” What is the
point of academic writing: to interpret the world or to change it?
In academic writing, there are two kinds of arguments. On the one hand, there
are analytical arguments, those that are descriptive, what could be called
philosophical arguments. On the other hand, there are ethical arguments, those
that are prescriptive or political arguments.
The analytical argument is descriptive because it is designed to describe what
is true and why. This argument is philosophical, a Greek word that means
“the love of knowledge.” An analytical argument is about a love of knowledge
for its own sake. This kind of argument is about the complete and accurate
understanding of something.
The ethical argument is prescriptive, as in a doctor who prescribes medicine
to cure a patient; the ethical argument seeks to provide a cure for the issue
addressed. This argument is often political, insofar as it seeks to change an
individual or a culture for the better. In theory, ideas for change should be
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based on a writer’s clear understanding of the problem at hand; in practice,
this superior understanding does not always grace those who want to fix the
world.
Toward the Paper
It is often effective to launch a conclusion by dealing with the trickiest
counter(s) to your argument, or by reviewing several counter-arguments.
There are two ways to deliver your argument. The most common way is to put
it in a robust paragraph at the start of your conclusion, synthesizing together
all the assertions, evidence, and analysis dealt with in detail in the body of the
essay.
Thus, the most basic structure for a conclusion is to start it with an argument
statement that then leads to the implications of the argument:
Paragraph 1: Argument Statement
– Counter
– Response
– Argument
Paragraph 2 and Forward: Implications
– Implications
Or you can deliver the argument in chunks as you move through the body of
your paper. At the end of each body section, elevate your discussion up to
the level of the argument, summarizing it up to this point. Then dive back
down to the level of evidence and analysis as you move into the next body
section. If you do so, you don’t need to summarize your entire argument when
you get to your conclusion: you only need to summarize the aspects of your
argument that you’ve put forth since your last summary, and then you can shift
into your concluding discussion.
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— Practicum —
Developing Your Argument
This activity is designed to help you develop your main argument—to see
how far you can push it while adhering to the key criterion, I believe this to
be true.
1. Using the argument you’ve developed, ask yourself, What is the truth
that I’ve discovered? What is the claim you can make about the text that
satisfies the criterion, I believe this to be true?
2. You’ve probably described an aspect of the text. Let’s see if you can
push your interpretation a little further (sometimes you can;
sometimes you can’t). Start by asking how that thing you just
described about your text got there. Specifically, do you think
someone deliberately did it?
[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] I Don’t Know
If you said yes, answer Question 3 (a and b). If no or I don’t
know, answer 4 (a and b).
3. Questions of meaning (what did the author intend? how did [s]he do
it? why?):
3a. How did the author create the quality of the text that you’ve
described (as best as you can reconstruct that process while
adhering to I believe this to be true)?
3b. The previous question (3a) was a how question: how did he do it? Now
ask the why question: why did the author create the quality of the
text that you’ve described (as best as you can imagine what their
motives might have been while adhering to I believe this to be true)?
4. Questions of significance (what does the text point to? where does it
come from? why is it important?)
4a. Where did the quality of the text you’re describing come from?
What forces brought it into existence? (You’re speculating, yes, but
adhere to I believe this to be true.)
4b. Describe the process through which that force / those forces
resulted in the quality of the text that you’re describing. (How far
can you push things while maintaining, I believe this to be true?)
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Argument Statement
It’s easy to be hard on Polonius, the bumbling counselor to the king in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet whose overlong speeches, filled with pretension and digression, lead the queen to
ask for “more matter with less art.” He’s not just an overbearing father to Ophelia; he’s a
repugnant patriarch who domineers her will and strangles her verve for life. Polonius is
also a single father doing his best to balance his career in a high-power government
position with life at home as his two rebellious children become young adults.
Shakespeare’s play includes traces—only the slightest of hints that must be imaginatively
flushed out—of a more complex life for Polonius. The very name “Polonius” suggests
two possible backstories—one as an a Polish immigrant whose assimilation into Danish
society surely came with many complexities, the other as a military man involved with
Denmark’s conquest of Poland. Polonius was an actor who played the part of Julius
Caesar at university. When and how he met his wife, Ophelia and Laertes’s mother, is
unclear but it seems likely that she is dead (otherwise, she’s shockingly absent from her
children’s lives). Did she die giving birth to Ophelia? Or were her children older? Do
they remember her? How has her death—surely traumatic for all involved—affected her
family? Perhaps a grieving Polonius threw himself into his job, and that’s how he
climbed the ranks of King Hamlet’s council to become a leading advisor to Denmark’s
royal family. Or maybe Polonius had a hand in Claudius’s assassination of the king, and
that’s why Claudius praises Polonius so effusively in public. These hidden hypotheticals
are only possibilities, but they humanize Polonius enough to complicate the common
antipathy to the character, which stems in part from the fact that audiences experience the
play from the point of view of Prince Hamlet, who wants to marry Polonius’s daughter
and murder Polonius’s boss. Audiences sympathetic to Hamlet inevitably accept his
characterization of Polonius as a fool, a nuisance, and an enemy. What happens if we
change our point-of-view to look at Polonius from the perspective of modern single
parents struggling to balance work and life? Any father would struggle sending a son
with a penchant for youthful rebellion off to college in another country. Any father would
be thrown off if the heir to the crown in his country started saying he was deeply in love
with his daughter. Let’s hope most fathers wouldn’t, like Polonius, put their job ahead of
the well-being of their daughter, though we still see that situation all the time. Ultimately,
Polonius literally gives his life for his job. He comes out of hiding to protect the queen
and becomes a victim of murder by an unhinged aristocrat who then callously plays
games with the dead body. Polonius’s death utterly breaks his children. Ophelia
deteriorates into a mental health crisis and eventually suicide. Anger drives Laertes to
violence that completely backfires, resulting in his death. Where do our sympathies lie
now? Polonius actually emerges as the most relatable parent in Hamlet—not an
admirable father, but one that modern audiences might identify with—when set beside
the very bad parenting seen elsewhere in the play. King Hamlet is a father who asks his
son to go murder someone, which ends up destroying the child’s life. Queen Gertrude is a
mother who marries her dead husband’s brother and then is baffled that her son is
struggling. King Claudius is a stepfather only because he murdered his stepson’s actual
father. Ultimately, my defense of Polonius is not that he’s a good father but that he’s a
good character, much more complex and compelling than the cliché of the bumbling
patriarch allows.
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Into the Essay
Argument statement.
Argument statement.
From The Working Class in Hamlet
There’s a lot for working-class folks to hate about Hamlet—not just because it’s old,
dusty, difficult to understand, crammed down our throats in school, and filled with frills,
tights, and those weird lace neck thingies that are just socially awkward to think about.
Peak Renaissance weirdness. Claustrophobically cloistered inside the castle of Elsinore,
quaintly angsty over royal family problems, Hamlet feels like the literary epitome of
elitism. “Lawless resolutes” is how the Wittenberg scholar Horatio describes the soldiers
who join Fortinbras’s army in exchange “for food.” The Prince Hamlet who has never
worked a day in his life denigrates Polonius as a “fishmonger”: quite the insult for a royal
advisor to be called a working man. And King Claudius complains of the simplicity of
"the distracted multitude.” But, in Hamlet, Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’
denigrations of the working class as readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with
the rather valuable behavior of working-class characters themselves. When allowed to
represent themselves, the working class in Hamlet are characterized as makers of
things—of material goods and services like ships, graves, and plays, but also of ethical
and political virtues like security, education, justice, and democracy. Meanwhile,
Elsinore has a bad case of affluenza, the make-believe disease invented by an American
lawyer who argued that his client's social privilege was so great that it created an
obliviousness to law. While social elites rot society through the twin corrosives of
political corruption and scholarly detachment, the working class keeps the machine
running. They build the ships, plays, and graves society needs to function, and monitor
the nuts-and-bolts of the ideals—like education and justice—that we aspire to uphold.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
I have argued that the presence of a critique of misogyny and patriarchy as tragic
suggests progressive impulses in Shakespeare, relative to his time and place, operating
simultaneously with unconscious bias. Of all the terms we might apply to the various
manifestations of gender issues in Shakespeare’s plays—misogyny, patriarchy, sexism,
feminism—implicit bias is the most satisfying. On the one hand, it acquits Shakespeare
from charges of bigotry and hostility that are difficult to defend after closely reading his
works. On the other hand, it holds Shakespeare accountable for the diminished status of
women in his plays. It acknowledges Shakespeare’s visions of misogyny and patriarchy
as sources of tragedy, as well as acts of misogyny and patriarchy in Shakespeare’s own
writing practices. Because the sexism of Hamlet is structural rather than polemical, it is
more subtle than we are accustomed to observing in Renaissance texts. Shakespeare’s
sexism “metamorphosed,” as Banaji and Greenwald describe racism in America, “into
harder-to-see forms.”
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Argument statement.
From The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
Love is tragic in Hamlet because the governmental system in place forces family
dynamics to spill over into politics: in a dynastic monarchy, small-scale family drama has
large-scale social consequences. Dynastic monarchy brings the emotion that usually
characterizes family drama into government, which is supposed to run on reason rather
than emotion. That’s because love personalizes and makes passionate decisions that
social institutions try to render impersonal and objective. When governments are
administered by families, the emotions that infuse family dynamics seep into political
dynamics. Dynastic governments make political systems just as volatile as familial
systems. Governmental institutions are built to be impersonal decision-making machines
that operate purely on the basis of logic and reason. Hamlet shows what happens when
the dynamics that govern our private lives come to have consequences for public policy.
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Counters and Responses
One of the most ancient strategies of argument is to acknowledge and account
for the counter-arguments to your position. Dealing with counters shows that you
have examined an issue from multiple perspectives, that you have taken a
careful and considered approach to your interpretation, and—having done
so—you have decided that the position for which you are arguing is the most
satisfactory position.
Counters are not about disagreement with people. They are about
acknowledging the complexity of an issue which, if it’s problematic enough
for you to need to write a paper about, is by definition open to multiple
possible interpretations.
Counters build trust. They show that you have about your argument in
sufficient depth.
Counters need responses. It is not enough to acknowledge the existence of a
counter-argument (e.g., “I am aware that such-and-such position exists”). You
must acknowledge a counter-argument and respond to it.
Sometimes writers feel that they must make their position look strong by
denying and rejecting any position that isn’t theirs. It is a sign of intellectual
strength, not weakness, to qualify your position to accommodate new
evidence and other perspectives. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you
must bat down violently and absolutely any position that is different from
your own, of thinking that it is a weakness to qualify your argument.
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If a counter-argument isn’t working, don’t force it just because you think you
need to have one in your paper. A forced counter is usually transparently bad
and the tracks from—rather than enhances—the quality of an argument.
Don’t straw-man counter-arguments. Don’t prop up a position that no one
would ever seriously adopt just so you can knock it down for the sake of
having gone through a counter-argument and your response to it. “Some might
say that the yellow bottle on the table is ketchup; I have argued, however,
that it is better to view it as mustard.” That tactic is transparent, and it detracts
from your scholarly authority (when one of the points of doing counters and
responses is to enhance your authority). Instead, engage with ideas you find
difficult and challenging to your own.
Be specific with counters. The notion that something “is open to
interpretation,” and therefore yours may not be the be-all, end-all
interpretation, is not a counter-argument. It is a fact of the interpretive
enterprise. All sorts of things are open to interpretation but saying so doesn’t
get us anywhere. Instead, describe the specific interpretive options available
to us, where they can co-exist and where they conflict, and why the position
you’re arguing for is ultimately the most satisfactory.
The Levels of Counters and Responses
Include counters and responses at both the paragraph-level and the paper-level;
that is, address the counter-claims to your argument as well as the counterclaims
to your assertions. Include small-scale counters and responses in terms of
the analyses of evidence that you perform in your body paragraphs, and largescale
counters and responses for the overall argument that is the center of your
paper.
Counters come on three levels:
– Counter-argument, probably the most commonly employed form of
counter, is probably the weakest and least important. It involves
someone who, looking at the totality of evidence and analysis you
have offered, could come down to a different conclusion.
– Counter-analysis involves someone who has or could look at the same
evidence as you and generate a different interpretation.
– Counter-evidence is additional facts, data, examples, etc. that could lead
someone to a different position than the one you’re arguing. It can
come on any of the three levels of evidence.
▪ There can be counter textual evidence: drawn from your text—
maybe a line in a play or a date that you haven’t focused on
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much—that doesn’t transparently fit the argument you’re
delivering.
▪ There can be counter historical evidence: drawn from outside your
text—maybe a different play from the period you’re considering
or a contemporaneous social movement—that seems to suggest
a different interpretation than the one you’re offering.
▪ There can be counter Scholarly Evidence: previous scholarship that
doesn’t jive with your argument. Counters could come from any
of the three kinds of Scholarly Evidence:
• A counter Critical Scholarship would be a scholar who has read
your text differently than you do.
• A counter Theoretical Scholarship would be a scholar whose
interpretive method would generate a different argument
than the one you’re delivering.
• A counter Historical Scholarship would be a scholar who offers
a different context than the one you’ve established.
Structuring Counters and Responses
Counter-arguments can be actual or hypothetical: actual claims that scholars
have put forth in writing (which you present in your paper), or alternate
possible positions on an issue that you can imagine a reasonable person
adopting.
A frequent place to put a counter-argument is the start of the conclusion, setting
up an argument statement.
If you have been dealing with counter-evidence and counter-analysis throughout
the body of an essay, there probably isn’t all that much work left to do on the
level of counter-argument.
That’s why it’s sometimes best to deal with counter-argument in the introduction
rather than the conclusion. Use counter-arguments in a literature review if you
are writing a research paper or in a question/problem statement if you are
writing an essay without scholarly engagement.
Especially if you are proposing an argument that you know to be provocative
or objectionable, you might review and respond to the counter-arguments in
your introduction, before you even get to the body of my paper, directly after
having stated your thesis.
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Into the Essay
Evidence, analysis, counter-analysis, and response.
Counter-argument and response.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the
Beginning of Modern Politics
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
‘Tis strange. (1.1.60-64)
There really is something “strange” about Horatio’s story. A technical term of combat,
“parle” means peaceful negotiations between the opposing sides of a conflict. In fact, the
Oxford English Dictionary cites this line from Hamlet for its definition: “A debate or
conference; discussion; negotiation; spec. a meeting between enemies or opposing parties
to discuss the terms of an armistice.” But the former king, if Horatio can be taken at his
word, once slaughtered a slew of Polacks while in parlay. This is not the only possible
reading of this line. Perhaps Horatio is trying to be metaphorical or glib – and there is
some editorial dispute over the phrase “sledded Polacks” – but the most straightforward
reading of the first substantive bit of information we get about King Hamlet is that he
was a warrior king who did not respect the laws of war.
From What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College
To be clear, I am not saying that “the self” does not exist. I am saying that, from a
Shakespearean perspective, “selves”—along with souls, minds, natures, identities, and
essences—exist in a radically different and less impressive way than is usually assumed.
The self exists as a function of discourse, as a concept invented by humans, not as a
reality that is psychologically, philosophically, theologically, or existentially compelling.
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Counter-argument and response flowing into an argument statement and implications.
Argument statement, question/problem for the stakes, counter-evidence, response leading
to implications.
From Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy
Any speculation about Shakespeare’s life and attitudes toward art runs the risk
of the biographical fallacy that scours and sometimes invents personal experience as a
roman a clef for literary expression. We have better footing talking about the text than
the author. Yet it would be absurd, given the scarcity of historical facts we know about
Shakespeare, to act as if his artistic output weren’t an important resource for knowledge
about the man. It would also be absurd to act as if Shakespeare’s personal experiences
didn’t influence his art simply because we don’t and can’t know what they were with
much certainty. The most balanced approach is to weigh what little biographical
information we have about Shakespeare against the massive corpus of literary output that
we have to determine what might, plausibly, have been the case.
When we do so, there is reason to believe that Shakespeare wrote some of
himself into Horatio. Like Horatio, Shakespeare found solace after the death of a loved
one in the telling of tragedy. By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, Horatio and
Shakespeare were able to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s emotional
response to life’s hardships and injustices. In this line of thought, the skeptical and stoic
storytelling represented by Horatio may have been, for Shakespeare, a coping mechanism
against the radical and eratic skepticism of a Hamlet who looks at the world and finds no
fairness, certainty, stability, or joy. If, in the Aristotelian tradition, the social function of
tragedy is to purge the emotions of pity and fear from audiences who see those emotions
represented on stage, tragedy provides catharsis for an author too. Writing tragedy
purifies a troubled mind by purging emotions of grief and anger. Writing tragedy allows
us to go on living in the face of pain and injustice without killing ourselves or others.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
Properly framed, Hamlet could be an introduction to the idea of suicide
contagion, generating a self-consciousness that might counteract the danger of the
phenomenon. When you know what suicide contagion is and how it works, you’re less
likely to succumb to it, or perpetuate it. Yet, if hearing Hamlet talk about suicide planted
the seed in Ophelia’s mind, could the same happen with Hamlet in our classrooms?
Could the text be damaging to someone who has a pre-existing vulnerability?
Some months ago, I was going to invite my teenage niece to a performance of
Romeo and Juliet, but decided against it. One of her friends had recently died by suicide.
It shook the whole community. Parents were hyper-vigilant about the possibility of
contagion. Better not to take any risks with Romeo and Juliet, I thought. It might be an
opportunity for a healthy conversation, but I had absolutely no confidence that it would
be a positive experience for her. The uncertainty froze me. I went to the play alone.
This is the equivalent of adopting media guidelines. Maybe a 10th-grade
classroom doesn’t need a close reading of Gertrude’s speech about Ophelia’s death.
Emphasizing the location and manner of death can create contagion, as can visual
representations of the location. Experts would advise using visuals from Ophelia’s life, or
the logo of the suicide prevention hotline, rather than John Everett Millais’s famous 1852
painting of Ophelia. Avoid saying suicide is senseless or happens “without warning.”
Include up-to-date local and national resources to promote help-seeking behavior.
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25
Thesis
A good thesis is hard to write. Even expert writers don’t get it right every time.
Your thesis is the most important sentence(s) in your essay. That’s why you
should spend a lot of time working it until it’s perfect.
Having a good thesis makes writing a paper easy. Everything else falls into
place once you’ve got a well-thought-out, well-written thesis.
But what is a thesis statement? What is it supposed to accomplish? The word
thesis comes from the Greek tithenai, “to place, put, set”: a thesis is a setting
down of yourself, a placing of yourself, a positioning of yourself on an
important question or issue. Thus, the Greeks used the word thesis to refer to
a proposition.
As a proposition, a thesis is either true or false, and it should be demonstrable
as one or the other based on the evidence you have available to you.
A thesis should be interpretive, meaning that it requires interpretation to get
there.
A thesis needs to be consequential, concise, and clear. Being all three is not
easy.
It must be consequential, meaning that it makes a powerful and potentially
transformative claim about the text at hand. But it must also be concise
because detailing your argument in full in your introduction would confuse and
alienate your reader. Being consequential (big and powerful) and concise
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(short and punchy) at once is no easy task; the way to do so is to be clear.
Clarity involves the use of key terms to synthesize and organize your major
claims into logical systems of contrast and continuity.
There are two important logical paradigms to keep in mind when thinking
about theses: contrast and continuity. The logic of contrast is that this is true;
that is not. The logic of continuity is that this leads to that. Most thesis statements
can be boiled down a version of one or both of these logical paradigms.
Your thesis statement is not a roadmap to your paper. Sometimes it can be
helpful, especially in longer papers, to provide a roadmap to the structure of
your paper—that is, to summarize your organization—somewhere near
(before or after) your thesis, but your thesis statement should be detachable
from your paper.
In other words, make your thesis statement quotable. Try to boil your
argument down to a simple, clean proposition that uses big concepts to make
a big claim.
Pretty much any issue that is difficult enough to need an academic paper to
be written about it is going to require an argument that is complex and
nuanced, but you can’t allow all that complexity and nuance into your thesis.
You can’t argue your case in full in your thesis, but you should report a simple
version of the position at which you’ll arrive by the end of the paper.
It is perfectly fine to have a multi-sentence thesis statement. In fact, a good
thesis statement can rarely be written in one simple sentence. When
articulating your thesis, exploit the organizational tools of complex and
compound sentences, semicolons, and multiple sentences.
State what is not true, not just what is.
A good thesis statement usually has two components: a truth-claim and an
explanation. The truth-claim is an argument that X is the case; the explanation
states that X is the case because of Y and Z.
The truth-claim of your thesis is demonstrated through inductive reasoning,
the marshaling of evidence (facts, data, statistics, examples, cases, summaries,
quotations, paraphrases, etc.) that, when taken together, allows a reasonable
person to conclude that X is the case.
The explanation part of your thesis is demonstrated through deductive
reasoning: the use of inference to suggest that A leads to B, B to C and D, C
to E, F, and G and D to H, I, J, and K, etc.
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Sometimes, when writing a thesis, we build up to our central claim because we
want to have the logic in place that shows how we go there. Flip that around.
In terms of how readers process information, it’s much better to have the
truth claim first, and the follow-up explanation second.
When writing your theses, try to answer the questions what, how, and why. A
social science paper might have a thesis that articulates what is the case (a
truth-claim) as well as how and why it came to be the case (the explanation).
A literary studies paper might have a thesis that articulates what an author
did in a text (a truth-claim), how the author did it (another truth-claim), and
why the author did it that way (an explanation).
Consider answering how and why questions in your theses by using certain
key prepositions: use the word “by” to articulate how, and the word “because”
to articulate why. Using the word “by” requires you to establish procedural
connections: “The author did A; the author did A by doing B, C, and D.”
Using the word “because” requires you to establish causal connections: “Z is
the case; X led to Y, which led to Z.”
When drafting a paper, write your thesis statement first and last. That is, write
a thesis statement to guide the analyses you write in the body of your paper.
Write those body paragraphs. And then write an argument statement that
provides an overview of your ideas. But then, after you have written your
argument statement, return to your thesis statement, revising it to reflect exactly
what you argue in your paper (often you will discover your argument in the
course of articulating its parts—you will better understand the point you’re
making—and you need to make sure your thesis reflects your best
understanding of the topic under consideration).
Avoid multi-factorial thesis statements. Consider this example of a multifactoral
thesis: “Shakespeare and ballet work so well together because of their
shared base in aristocracy and Shakespeare’s unique and poignant use of
imagery.” Either write the aristocracy paper or write the imagery paper. It
may be true that many different elements factor into an argument, but it’s
better to pick one line of thought and pursue it fully. Multi-factorial thesis
statements result in a soft argument for a number of causes as opposed to a
strong argument for a single, most-important cause.
What to Do and What Not to Do in a Thesis
A good thesis statement should be:
– True
– Clear
– Consequential
– Not obvious
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– Quotable / Detachable
– Big and bold: pushed as far as possible while maintaining, I believe this
to be true.
– Direct: no fluff.
– Strategic with key terms.
– Not too short, not too long.
– Analytical, not ethical or political.
– One (and only one) central claim, though it may have several parts.
– An answer the driving question/problem of the essay.
– An explanation of how and why something came into existence.
What Not to Do in a Thesis:
– Write something that’s not true.
– Write a multi-factorial thesis.
– Write a moralistic thesis.
– Use thought-terminating clichés (“truth,” “reality,” “human nature”)
– Be suggestive, coy, or vague.
– Be cute or clever.
– Be too short.
– Be too long.
– Ask a question instead of giving an answer.
– Rely on the surrounding writing for the thesis to make sense.
– Quote in the thesis.
Key Strategies
Some top strategies for thesis statements are:
1. Truth Claim / Explanation
2. Surface Reading / Closer Reading
3. Not X but Y
4. Use Key Terms
5. Less is More
Toward the Paper
Put your thesis early in your paper, and state it clearly. Don’t save it until the
end of the paper. You’re not writing the great American novel: don’t try to
keep your reader in suspense.
That is, don’t fall victim to “rabbit in the hat” argumentation. A magician,
because he or she is trying to create suspense, shows you an empty hat, and
then, after much trickery and sleight of hand—voila!—pulls out a rabbit at the
end of the trick. When you’re writing an academic paper, you’re not a
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magician. Don’t try to create suspense; don’t save your rabbit until the end
of the trick. Just show us your rabbit at the start of the paper.
The most popular place to put a thesis statement is at the end of an
introduction, though it is important to remember that the end of your
introduction may not necessarily be the end of your first paragraph. Putting
a thesis statement at the end of an introduction allows you to frame a
question/problem in that introduction, to offer an answer or response in your
thesis statement, and then to support that thesis with evidence and analysis in the
body of your paper.
But you need not save your thesis statement until the end of your introduction.
It could appear earlier in your introduction. It could even be the first sentence
of your paper.
Keep in mind the difference between a thesis statement and an argument
statement. Almost always, our thesis statements are too long—too much like
argument statements. Revise them to tighten them up.
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— Practicum —
Key-Terming a Thesis
Sometimes, a thesis is too long and unclear because the writer hasn’t yet
figured out the key terms of the argument. Consider these four versions
of a thesis statement, in which the key terms for the topics, concepts,
relationships, and claims become progressively clearer.
Draft Thesis: As Shakespeare draws parallels between Hamlet and
Ophelia in terms of their falls into madness and struggles with suicide,
Ophelia’s suicide and Hamlet’s decision not to reflects the question
Hamlet posed in his “To be, or not to be” speech. Her choice of
suicide is not a demonstration of morality, but rather one of truth,
revealing the sort of impact that grief and misery can have on certain
people and their psyche.
Version 2: In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as one’s freedom increases, one’s
likelihood of committing suicide decreases.
Version 3: In Hamlet, Shakespeare created an inverse relationship
between freedom and suicide.
Final Thesis: In Hamlet, Shakespeare created an inverse relationship
between freedom and suicide. Where the male Hamlet has a great deal
of freedom and successfully resists suicide, the female Ophelia feels
severely constrained and does commit suicide.
Key-term your own thesis by asking:
1. What terms accurately capture the things I’m making claims about?
2. What terms accurately capture the claims I’m making?
3. What’s the shortest way to articulate the central point I’m making?
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Thesis Statements
Not X but Y: Polonius is not a bumbling old fool but a single father struggling with worklife
balance.
Truth Claim-Explanation: In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius is a single father struggling
with work-life balance. This quality not only distances him from the cliched image of a
bumbling old fool that audiences love to hate but also makes Polonius surprisingly
relatable and sympathetic to twenty-first century audiences.
Less is More: Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance.
Authorial Intent: In Hamlet, Shakespeare hid the tragedy of Polonius—a single father
struggling with work-life balance—behind the more in-your-face suffering of Prince
Hamlet.
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Into the Essay
Thesis statement using key terms and contrasts for clarity.
Thesis statement using contrasts for clarity and a truth-claim/explanation model.
Thesis statement using key terms and a truth-claim / explanation approach.
Thesis statement using a less-is-more approach.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the
Beginning of Modern Politics
King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to
experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are
much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King
Hamlet’s.
From Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy in Hamlet
Instead of the passionate Hamlet who repeatedly interrupts ‘The Mousetrap,’ the stoic
Horatio is the best authorial avatar for a Shakespeare who strategically wrote himself and
his own voice out of his works. By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, both
Horatio and Shakespeare were able to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s
emotional response to life’s hardships and injustices.
From What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College
If we understand meaning as intent, then “To thine own self be true” means,
paradoxically, that “the self” does not exist. Or, more accurately, Shakespeare’s Hamlet
implies that “the self” exists only as a rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological
construct that we use to make sense of our experiences and actions in the world, not as
anything real.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Denmark is a culture of drunkenness.
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Thesis statement using a truth-claim / explanation approach.
Thesis statement using key terms, not X but Y, and a truth-claim / explanation
approach.
Thesis statement using a truth-claim / explanation approach.
Thesis statement using less-is-more, truth-claim / explanation, and not X but Y
approaches.
From Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of
Aeneas’s Tale to Dido
Aeneas’s tale to Dido supplied Shakespeare with all of the connections he sought to make
at this crucial point in his play and his career—connections between himself and
Marlowe, between the start of Hamlet and the end, between Prince Hamlet and King
Claudius, between epic poetry and tragic drama, and between the classical literature
Shakespeare was still reading hundreds of years later and his own potential as a classic
who might (and would) be read hundreds of years into the future.
From “‘To be, or not to be’: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
I want to suggest that Shakespeare did not care about the questions of metaphysical
philosophy, and that he satirized metaphysics in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” speech
because he thought acting was more important than being. That is, Shakespeare valued
human action and interaction, including the social roles we perform like actors playing
characters on a stage, over abstract knowledge about existence generated through
theoretical reasoning.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
As in society today, suicide is contagious in Hamlet, at least in the example of Ophelia,
the only death by suicide in the play, because she only becomes suicidal after hearing
Hamlet talk about his own suicidal thoughts in “To be, or not to be.”
From The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
Love is tragic in Hamlet. The bloody catastrophe at the end of that play is principally
driven not by hatred or a longing for revenge, but by love.
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Thesis statement using key terms, not X but Y, and a truth-claim / explanation
approach.
Thesis statement using a less-is-more approach.
Thesis statement using key terms plus not X but Y and a truth-claim / explanation
approaches.
Thesis statement using a surface reading / closer reading approach.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
As illustrated in this essay, Hamlet is not misogynistic in the sense that it promotes the
superiority of men and the inferiority of women. In fact, Hamlet critiques misogyny and
patriarchy by configuring them with tragedy, yet the Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet still
held an unconscious bias against women. In other words, Hamlet exhibits a structural
sexism that is different from and more difficult to discern than the overt sexism of
misogyny and patriarchy.
From Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of
Music in Hamlet
Shakespeare answered the question of Ophelia’s moral agency in an unexpected way:
through the imagery of music in Hamlet, including the songs she sings just before her
death.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social
Determinism
The world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized
version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of
fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls
into question the freedom of the individual will.
From The Working Class in Hamlet
In Hamlet, Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’ denigrations of the working class as
readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with the rather valuable behavior of
working-class characters themselves.
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Thesis statement using not X but Y and truth-claim / explanation approaches.
Thesis statement using key terms and a less-is-more approach.
Thesis statement using a truth-claim / explanation approach.
From The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
Instead of “the foundation of our community” that it is at Harvard, honor is tragic
in Hamlet. For Hamlet and Laertes, the quest to preserve the respect for their names
results in catastrophe for themselves, their families, and the nation.
From The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
By connecting the ways characters live their lives in Hamlet to the ways they die—onstage
or off, poisoned or stabbed, etc.—Shakespeare symbolized hamartia in catastrophe.
From Tragic Excess in Hamlet
In Hamlet, Shakespeare paralleled the situations of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras (the
father of each is killed, and each then seeks revenge) to promote the virtue of moderation:
Hamlet moves too slowly, Laertes too swiftly—and they both die at the end of the play—
but Fortinbras represents a golden mean which marries the slowness of Hamlet with the
swiftness of Laertes. Shakespeare endorsed the virtue of balance by allowing Fortinbras
to be one of the very few survivors of the play.
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26
Stakes
In addition to identifying a question/problem with respect to your text(s), the
introduction of an essay should establish why an argument matters, how it
will be helpful. This is what we call setting the stakes.
Your statement of what’s at stake essentially identifies the topic of your
conclusion. That conclusion, when you get there, will fully discuss the
implications of your argument. In your introduction, when setting the stakes, your
reader doesn’t need a full statement of the implications of your argument. Your
reader simply needs to know that there will be implications and to know where
your paper is going.
Your stakes are different than your question/problem. Your question/problem
states why your text needs interpretation, while your stakes explain how your
argument will contribute to an area of academic inquiry that is bigger than just
your text.
Your argument should be transformative. It should reveal something new
about your text, and that revelation will, in turn, reveal something new about
some larger field of academic inquiry to which your text bears some
relevance.
What’s at stake is not the “life lesson” that you can take away from your
argument. It is, instead, the “academic lesson.”
Don’t try to be all things to all people. Write to a specific academic audience.
Stakes
127
Your statement of what’s at stake should indicate the academic field to which
your argument is making a contribution.
Don’t overdo it with the stakes in the introduction: less is more. Prior to
reading the body of your essay, your reader simply isn’t ready to deal with
your implications in depth yet, but he or she does need to know where your
argument is going to end up (i.e., the topic of the conclusion). You can usually
set up what’s at stake in one sentence, a few, or a short paragraph.
Structuring What’s at Stake
The below models for setting the stakes in the introduction are for single- and
multi-source papers that don’t have a research component to them.
Structures including those research components are included in the section
on Structure.
The two most common places to set the stakes of an argument are at the
beginning and the end of the introduction.
Stakes-Last Introduction: One way to structure an introduction is to start with
your text. Establish a driving question/problem related to that text, deliver your
thesis statement, and then identify what’s at stake in that argument at the end
of the intro. So that introduction might look like this:
Paragraph 1: Question/Problem Statement
– Orientation
– Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraph 2: Thesis Statement
– Text
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
Stakes-First Introduction: Another way to structure an introduction is to start
with what’s at stake in your argument. Establish a question/problem related
to your stakes, propose to answer it by turning to your text, and then deliver
your thesis statement at the end of the intro. So that introduction might look
like this:
Paragraph 1: What’s at Stake
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– Orientation to Stakes
– Evidence for Stakes
– Analysis for Stakes
– Stakes
Paragraph 2: Thesis Statement
– Method/Text
– Terms
– Thesis
— Practicum —
Brainstorming What’s at Stake
Some questions to help develop what’s at stake include:
– What are the policy implications that follow—i.e., how some
institution should enact rules?
– Are there common misconceptions that your argument challenges?
– What are the lingering questions that need further thought or
research?
– Are you able to theorize outward? To create a model for evidence
you haven’t analyzed in depth?
– Can you offer a concluding example that “brings it home” in a
concrete way?
– Is there another turn of the screw in your argument that might
surprise readers?
– Does your argument allow you to predict the future?
To brainstorm what’s at stake in your argument, answer each of these
questions. In the essay itself, however, don’t try to do all or even more than
one of these moves. Pick a single approach and develop it in depth.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Brainstorming Stakes
What are the policy implications that follow—i.e., how some institution should enact
rules?
I don’t think there are policy implications, since the ethical “takeaway” is that a
person should put their family before their job. I guess there could be a
message in there that companies should ensure that workers have enough time
to spend with family, but that’s pretty boring and I’m not interested in taking
the conclusion in that direction.
Are there common misconceptions that your argument challenges?
My argument about Polonius challenges the surface reading of the character as
simply a bumbling old fool.
What are the lingering questions that need further thought or research?
(1) There’s still some uncertainty about Polonius’s name. (2) Did Shakespeare
provide any models of good parenting in Hamlet? (3) How could Polonius be
performed to capture the qualities I’ve described?
Are you able to theorize outward? To create a model for evidence you haven’t analyzed
in depth?
Polonius provides an exemplar of bad parenting that puts a person’s career
before his family, resulting in the deterioration of the family. You could apply
this logic to other parents in Hamlet: King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, King
Claudius.
Can you offer a concluding example that “brings it home” in a concrete way?
It’s probably that Polonius literally dies for doing his job. But I think I want
this to be in the body of the essay, not the conclusion.
Is there another turn of the screw in your argument that might surprise readers?
The idea that the “defense” of Polonius is not that he’s a good father but that
he’s a good (i.e., interesting, complex) character. Maybe I could flip the critical
reading of King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, and King Claudius by pointing out
that they too are relatable to modern audiences with stepfamilies.
Does your argument allow you to predict the future?
It’s not really that kind of argument.
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Into the Essay
Thesis statement leading into stakes.
Thesis statement leading into stakes.
Thesis statement leading into stakes.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the
Beginning of Modern Politics
King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to
experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are
much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King
Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, so often seen as the birth of modern
psychology, might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern politics as well.
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
“To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It seems to be a representation of tragic
angst, yet a consideration of the context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is
actually a satire of philosophy and Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of
everyday life. In this essay, a close reading of the context and meaning of this passage
leads into an attempt to formulate a Shakespearean image of philosophy.
From Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy in Hamlet
By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, both Horatio and Shakespeare were able
to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s emotional response to life’s hardships
and injustices. Thus, the stoic Horatio, rather than the passionate Hamlet who repeatedly
interrupts ‘The Mousetrap’, is the best authorial avatar for a Shakespeare who
strategically wrote himself and his own voice out of his works. This argument then
expands into a theory of ‘authorial catharsis’ and the suggestion that we can conceive of
Shakespeare as a ‘poet of reason’ in contrast to a ‘poet of emotion’.
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Thesis statement leading into stakes.
Thesis statement leading into stakes.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
The Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet exhibited an unconscious bias against women, I
argue, even as he sought to critique the mistreatment of women in a patriarchal society.
The evidence for this unconscious bias is not to be found in the misogynistic statements
made by the characters in the play. It exists, instead, in the demonstrable preference
Shakespeare showed for men over women when deciding where to deploy his literary
talents. Thus, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a powerful literary example—one which speaks
to, say, the modern corporation—showing that deliberate efforts for egalitarianism do not
insulate one from the effects of structural inequalities that both stem from and create
unconscious bias.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social
Determinism
The world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized
version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of
fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls
into question the freedom of the individual will. As such, Shakespeare’s Hamlet both
commented on the transformation of pagan fate into Christian providence that happened
in the centuries leading up to the play, and anticipated the further transformation of fate
from a theological to a sociological idea, which occurred in the centuries following
Hamlet.
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Implications
It is not enough to have an argument. A paper must state the implications of that
argument. What’s the pay-off? Who cares? So what? Why does it matter?
What does this change?
The best way to think about stakes and implications is to ask: What can we do with
the knowledge generated in my argument?
Thesis : Argument :: Stakes : Implications. Just as your introduction has a short
thesis statement that serves as a snapshot of your argument (which is fully
delivered in the conclusion), your introduction should have a short statement
of what’s at stake that serves as a snapshot of your implications (which are fully
delivered in the conclusion).
Academic Implications
When articulating your implications, be aware of certain traps that are offputting
to most readers. Don’t claim to have made the world a better place
or to have made your reader a better person. Don’t try to save the world.
Instead, explain how your ideas are useful to a specific audience whose
professional goals are to understand fully and completely a certain field, issue,
and/or text.
The most common error student writers make in their conclusions is to overexaggerate
the importance of their arguments. They do so by feeling as
though their ideas must have “real world consequences” or “major policy
implications.”
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Your conclusion should be addressed not too human beings but to academics
who are working in a distinct scholarly field. Your conclusion should address
what your argument changes, not for the entire world, but for the relatively
small number of people who have devoted their professional lives to
understanding and explaining a narrowly defined set of phenomena.
Argument-as-Lens
You can think of your conclusion as a mini-essay, specifically a “lens essay”
that uses your argument as a lens for looking at material that, strictly speaking,
falls outside your narrowly defined text.
This mini-essay includes its own Elements of Academic Writing (its own text,
its own question/problem, its own argument, its own evidence and analysis). The
elements in this new mini-essay are different than those in your whole essay.
Remember, this argument for the implications is different from the argument for
the whole paper. The argument for the implications is the idea you come up with
when you use the argument for the whole paper as a lens for looking at some
other topic (that other topic is the text for your implications).
Figure 5: Argument as Lens for Implications
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Close Reading and Theorization
Your implications are likely to take one of two forms—a close reading or a
theorization.
A Close Reading: A close reading unpacks some small aspect of your
text in an effort to enhance our understanding of the totality of the
document or phenomenon to which it belongs.
A Theorization: A Theorization unpacks something about your text in
an effort to comment on some idea or issue outside of the document
or phenomenon to which it belongs.
Let’s imagine you’re arguing this thesis: “Honor is tragic in Hamlet. For
Hamlet and Laertes, the quest to preserve the respect for their names results
in catastrophe for themselves, their families, and the nation.” A close reading
could conclude: “The catastrophe in Hamlet does not come about due to
some individual flaw or mistake, as happens in most classical tragedy. By
making the culture of honor the cause of catastrophe in Hamlet, Shakespeare
shifted the site of the tragic flaw from the individual to the culture.” In
contrast, a theorization could conclude: “Taken in the context of the Honor
Code at Harvard, Shakespeare’s treatment of honor as tragic in Hamlet allows
us to theorize the difference between two different kinds of honor: heroic
honor and tragic honor.”
Structuring Implications
What follows is a model for a four-paragraph conclusion that develops
substantive implications without bringing in additional research. A structure
including that research component is included in the section on Structure.
Paragraph 1: Argument Statement
– Counter-Argument
– Response
– Argument
Paragraph 2: What’s at Stake
– Method / Text for the Stakes
– Orientation to Stakes
– Evidence for Stakes
– Analysis for Stakes
– Question/Problem1 for the Stakes
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Paragraph 3: Implications, Part 1—The Idea
– Argument for the Implications
– Evidence for the Implications
Paragraph 4: Implications, Part 2—The Examples
– Analysis for the Implications
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— Practicum —
Developing Implications
The questions below are designed to help you develop a strong and
substantive conclusion.
1. In just a few words, state your text (the thing you’re interpreting) for
your essay.
2. Write a short version of your thesis.
3. The goal for your conclusion is to use your thesis to interpret
something else. What is that “something else”? Identify the text for
your implications (the thing your conclusion is interpreting).
4. Articulate the method for your implications (how you’re going to use your
argument to interpret the text for your implications).
5. Write an argument for the implications, which is different from the
argument for the whole paper. The argument for the implications is the
idea you come up with when you use the argument for the whole paper
as a lens for looking at some other topic (that other topic is the text for
your implications).
6. Identify some key evidence for the implications—the information, facts,
quotes, events, data, etc. that become clear when seen from the
vantage of your argument for the implications.
7. Now that you know where you want to end up with your implications,
write a question / problem statement for your implications laying out why that
text for your implications needs interpretation.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Implications
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life
balance who sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being. Shakespeare’s play
includes traces—only the slightest of hints that must be imaginatively flushed out—of a
more complex life for Polonius. The very name “Polonius” suggests two possible
backstories—one as an a Polish immigrant whose assimilation into Danish society surely
came with many complexities, the other as a military man involved with Denmark’s
conquest of Poland. Polonius was an actor who played the part of Julius Caesar at
university. When and how he met his wife, Ophelia and Laertes’s mother, is unclear but
it seems likely that she is dead (otherwise, she’s shockingly absent from her children’s
lives). Did she die giving birth to Ophelia? Or were her children older? Do they
remember her? How has her death—surely traumatic for all involved—affected her
family? Perhaps a grieving Polonius threw himself into his job, and that’s how he
climbed the ranks of King Hamlet’s council to become a leading advisor to Denmark’s
royal family. Or maybe Polonius had a hand in Claudius’s assassination of the king, and
that’s why Claudius praises Polonius so effusively in public. These hidden hypotheticals
are only possibilities, but they humanize Polonius enough to complicate the common
antipathy to the character, which stems in part from the fact that audiences experience the
play from the point of view of Prince Hamlet, who wants to marry Polonius’s daughter
and murder Polonius’s boss. Audiences sympathetic to Hamlet inevitably accept his
characterization of Polonius as a fool, a nuisance, and an enemy. What happens if we
change our point-of-view to look at Polonius from the perspective of modern single
parents struggling to balance work and life?
Any father would struggle sending a son with a penchant for youthful rebellion
off to college in another country. Any father would be thrown off if the heir to the crown
in his country started saying he was deeply in love with his daughter. Let’s hope most
fathers wouldn’t, like Polonius, put their job ahead of the well-being of their daughter,
though we still see that situation all the time. Ultimately, Polonius literally gives his life
for his job. He comes out of hiding to protect the queen and becomes a victim of murder
by an unhinged aristocrat who then callously plays games with the dead body. Polonius’s
death utterly breaks his children. Ophelia deteriorates into a mental health crisis and
eventually suicide. Anger drives Laertes to violence that completely backfires, resulting
in his death. Where do our sympathies lie now?
Polonius’s tragic mistake—putting his job before his family—brings clarity to
Shakespeare’s portrayal of other parents in Hamlet. King Hamlet is a father who asks his
son to murder someone, which ends up destroying the child’s life. Queen Gertrude is a
mother who marries her dead husband’s brother, then is baffled that her son is struggling.
King Claudius is a stepfather only because he killed his stepson’s actual father.
Shakespeare filled the play with bad parents.
On the one hand, each parent, like Polonius, put their career before their kid,
resulting in the deterioration of the family. On the other, the Hamlet family is, like the
Poloniuses, weirdly relatable in modernity, where stepfamilies are common. If Polonius
shows what can happen when a family loses a parent, the Hamlets are an example of
separation, remarriage, and efforts to negotiate a new family dynamic—that’s all there
before the murder of King Hamlet comes to light. And each parent has enough traces in
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The Writing Process
the text to suggest a backstory that contextualizes any easy judgment of their parenting.
King Hamlet is the divorced father who both hates seeing his ex-wife with a
new man and uses his child as leverage in a power play against her. Queen Gertrude is
the single mother who wants to feel romantic love for the first time in a while but fails to
appreciate how her new romantic life affects her child’s emotions. And King Claudius is
the new step-father who just wants everyone to be happy and tries to relate to his step-son
but finds himself in an emotionally combustable situation.
The impulse is to say, Oh, Shakespeare’s families are so modern. It may be
better to note that the term “non-traditional family” is absurd because history is filled
with single parents and stepfamilies in which the challenges of work-life balance are
heightened—and everyone’s a critic.
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Into the Essay
Implications theorizing outward from the argument.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the
Beginning of Modern Politics
Shakespeare’s Hamlet ultimately reveals that political judgments and affinities
are often developed for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. How political
information comes to us may determine our political judgments more than the actual
information at hand. And this is where modern politics begins.
I am not saying that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the first document of modern
politics. That honor probably belongs to Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, which pre-dated
Shakespeare’s Hamlet by some 20 years and quite possibly could have influenced
Shakespeare’s composition of this play. What I am suggesting is that modern political
theory begins with the recognition that our commitments, affinities, and ideologies are
bound up with mediated representations of our political options. From his very first
soliloquy, Prince Hamlet is a political pundit who provides not facts but interpretations
that are perspectival, simplified, and exaggerated, and he presents those ideas as if they
were incontrovertible truths about the world. Modern political theory begins with the
recognition that we apprehend the world perspectivally, and so the politician’s goal is not
only to promote and implement policies for the good of the people, but also to exploit
and manipulate the media which control the flow of information from the governing class
to the public. The politician’s goal is to have media report positive interpretations of his
or her policies as if those interpretations were facts, which is precisely what Prince
Hamlet does when he speaks directly to us and tells us that his father and uncle couldn’t
be more different, and that his father is a hero and his uncle a villain.
In treating Prince Hamlet as a partisan politician, I am not merely analogizing
him to the cable news pundits who look directly into a camera and offer shockingly
simplistic moral outrage as the news of the day. I am also referring to the politicians
themselves who (1) cannot help but develop policies from situated positions conditioned
by personal fears and desires, and (2) understand that a vote can be won by having
breakfast with someone – giving that person a story to tell, making him or her feel
important – as often as by presenting good policies. Hamlet invented the diner campaign
stop that wins over an audience through the simple mechanism of face-to-face contact.
Having worked with the English chronicles and other sources that made no attempt to
separate judgment from fact, and working in the age that invented culture-war polemics
to dispute the questions of the Protestant Reformation, the Shakespeare who wrote
Hamlet exploited the resources of dramatic expression – namely the soliloquy – to
represent a vision of politics ruled by perspectival polemic, not demonstrated truth. That
is the world in which we still live.
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Implications identifying directions for further research.
Implications proposing policy.
From The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
While this phenomenon has been shown to govern Hamlet, it would require further
examination to see if the dissemination of tragic necessity and the spectacularity of death
hold in other Shakespearean tragedies. Does it explain Romeo poisoning himself and
Juliet stabbing herself? Julius Caesar stabbed 23 times? Cinna the Poet torn apart by a
mob? The murder of the Macduffs? Cordelia hanged off-stage? Antigonus exiting
pursued by a bear? What is the spectrality of Chiron and Demetrius baked into a pie,
Othello smothering Desdemona with a pillow, or Cleopatra bitten by a snake?
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
The National Institute of Mental Health’s five steps for suicide prevention can be adapted
for teaching suicide texts like Hamlet:
1. Ask: It’s a difficult question, especially in a classroom, but when teaching Hamlet, ask
students to come speak with you, and to speak with others, if they are having suicidal
thoughts. Research suggests that asking about suicide does not increase suicidal
thoughts. Ophelia didn’t really have anyone to talk to.
2. Keep Them Safe: When teaching Hamlet, send a note home to parents, and ask any
students who may be vulnerable to reduce access to lethal items or places. Ophelia
shouldn’t be climbing trees over the brook. Don’t let Horatio have the cup.
3. Be There: When discussing Hamlet, listen to what students say about suicide, and
acknowledge their feelings. Research suggests acknowledgement reduces rather than
increases suicidal thoughts. Consider Hamlet acknowledging Horatio’s suicidal
thoughts, then keeping him safe.
4. Help Them Connect: Give students of Hamlet the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline: 1-800- 273-TALK (8255), and the Crisis Text Line: 741-741. Have them save
these numbers in their phones. Help any vulnerable students connect with a trusted
individual like a family member, friend, or mental health professional. Train them to
help others who are vulnerable connect to suicide prevention resources.
5. Stay Connected: Stay in touch after a crisis. Research shows a follow-up from a trusted
individual reduces the chance of suicide. Horatio was assigned to keep Ophelia safe,
but didn’t stay connected. Take a moment to check in with students a few weeks after
you’ve finished Hamlet.
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Implications offering a final example that “brings it home.”
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
Two moments punctuate the tragedy of alcohol in the play. First, an
overwhelmed Horatio reaches for the poisoned cup: “Here’s yet some liquor left”
(5.2.319). Symbolically, Horatio is poised to become the next victim of Denmark’s
culture of drunkenness—the alcoholic drinking to cope with loss and depression. As ever,
Hamlet stands against alcohol: “Give me the cup” (5.2.321). With any alcoholic, there
will be Horatios who survive the path of destruction and Hamlets, Ophelias, and
Gertrudes taken down by it.
Second, the folio concludes with uncharacteristically precise stage directions,
indicating the play’s end on the early-modern stage. Just before Hamlet dies, the folio
reads, “March afar off, and shout within” (5.2.294sd). Perhaps Shakespeare demanded
these sound effects because he had woven together a thread of concepts throughout the
play—alcohol, drums, cannons, and tragedy. “Go, bid the soldiers shoot,” Fortinbras
declares (5.2.381), entering the cluster of symbols surrounding binge drinking in Hamlet.
The folio stage direction reads, “Exeunt marching, after the which a peal of ordnance are
shot off” (5.2.350sd). Those cannon shots ringing out through the cold night air of the
Elizabethan playhouse could only recall, for an early-modern audience, the cannons
repeatedly shot as Claudius downed his drinks earlier in the play. Those cannons closing
the play convey how much of this tragedy can be traced back to Claudius’s alcoholism
and the culture of drunkenness in Denmark.
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28
Mobile Composing
At the end of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, his epic account of Western
literature, he says that his book was only possible because he, a German Jew,
was exiled in Istanbol and away from his books. He still had access to his
primary texts, the great works of Western literature—Homer, Dante, Virginia
Woolfe—but he was separated from the academic libraries of Europe, and
thus liberated from the influence and obligations of scholarship. He had
nothing but himself and his texts.
One of the challenges of our digital age is that we are rarely “away from our
books,” not only our Google Books, but also the ideas of others that flood the
internet and our research notes. This challenge is especially pointed given the
purpose of academic writing: to make an original contribution to a scholarly
conversation. Academic writing requires originality, but it can be elusive,
especially in fields such as history, philosophy, and literary studies that
interpret and reinterpret past ideas and scholarship. We necessarily read other
academics, but there is a fine line between responsive and derivative. Articles and
books are often rejected by publishers or reviewed negatively by readers
because they are not sufficiently original. Sometimes, as in the case of
Auerbach, the greatest contributions to an academic field come from those
who are least enmeshed in it.
“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move,” wrote Henry David
Thoreau, “My thoughts begin to flow.” Stand up, step away from your books,
walk around, and write—that has become my answer to the problem of
scholarly overexposure.
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My path to this position was unconventional. When I was in graduate school,
the plan was for me to finish my dissertation before my wife and I had
children. We missed that mark by about six months, which meant I had to
write the last 30 pages of my dissertation on my mobile phone, with a child,
sometimes wailing, in my other hand. This “mobile composing” evolved as I
began going for long walks with my son in his stroller (we lived in Southern
California at the time, so the weather was accommodating, and there were
miles and miles of paved walking trails). One of the virtues of this “mobile
composing” was that it got me away from my books, made sure I was offering
my own insights and original contributions to my research topic, as opposed
to creating a pastiche of quotations and ideas from other critics, which is
what much of my earlier writing had amounted to.
I’m an early riser, and I would wake up at around 4 AM—before the world,
and my son, awoke, demanding my attention with emails and diapers (both
usually filled with the same stuff: piss and shit). I would use this unfettered
time to read over the literary works and passages I was writing about that day,
as well as any relevant criticism I planned to consider. By 7 AM or so, my
son would awake, and I would make him breakfast and send my wife off to
work as the material I had read that morning rattled around in my mind,
figuring itself out. At around 9 AM, I would head out for a long walk with
my son. Inevitably, whatever was important from what I had read that
morning would stick in my head, and I took the time on these long walks to
organize my thoughts and plan a way to present them effectively. Then, when
it came time to write my actual sentences, I would walk for four or five
minutes, thinking about the sentence I was composing, and revising it several
times in my head. Then I would dictate the sentence into my phone. The
sentence might only be 10-15 words, but those words had behind them
several minutes of thinking about how to sharpen both the quality of the idea
and clarity of its expression. I usually wrote between two and four doublespaced
pages per day.
I wouldn’t always copy my mobile compositions over to a word processing
program immediately. Often they sat on my phone and in my pocket for
several days, which meant that they were available for revisions as I went
about my life trying to be a teacher and a parent. Thus, any analytical residue
that came to me in the course of a day, a week, or a month could easily be
incorporated into the composition. Prior to mobile composing, that idea
might have been victoriously nodded at and then forgotten about. Mobile
composing allows one to live one’s ideas, to develop them organically over
time, not only when one has the luxury of sitting at one’s desk.
When I was happy with my mobile composition, I wouldn’t just email it to
myself or copy-and-paste it into the paper I was working on. Instead, I would
pull up my composition on my phone and manually retype it into my word
processing program. Doing so meant that I was revising both my ideas and
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my language as they cycled in through my eyes, back through my mind, and
out through my fingers, revisions that probably wouldn’t have occurred had
I simply imported my mobile composition.
Mobile composing need not be done on an electronic device, of course. The
core of the idea is walking and thinking that is periodically recorded in
writing. But we now have the technology to write while we walk. Walking
gets the mind warm, propels thought forward, encourages energy and
movement in ideas through the same energy and movement in the body.
Thus, I think about “writing criticism” what the poet Edward Hirsh thinks
about “writing poetry”: “Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it
helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind. Poetry is
written from the body as well as the mind, and the rhythm and pace of a walk
can get you going and keep you grounded. It’s a kind of light meditation.”
Walking while composing allows for a free progression of thought, one that
can be periodically stamped into one’s mobile phone. Just as social media
sites like Twitter and Instagram allow one to communicate thoughts and
experiences with all the excitement that accompanies them “in the moment,”
mobile composing allows one to record, for example, the excitement of
discovery in literary criticism. This process of discovery must, of course, be
revised in due course, but mobile composing allows one to capture and
replicate the process of the mind making sense of evidence, as one’s reader
will be doing when working through an academic essay. In general, I find
myself revising my arguments and framing materials heavily, dozens of times,
but I find that the first time I articulate my analyses of specific bits of
information is usually my best articulation. There is an excitement and an
attention to the detail and richness of that information that can be lost if I
already know where I’m going. If I try to go back and re-create the specifics
of that analysis, they never survive.
One virtue of using a mobile device is that walking and thinking and writing
by speaking imitates the act of revising. Usually, we should write more like
we talk. On the one hand, we should avoid inflated diction, which is why we
often tell students to eschew jargon and write in plain language. On the other
hand, we should try to imitate the rhythms of speech in our writing, which is
why we tell students to read their prose aloud when they’re editing. Mobile
composing satisfies both demands, helping one write in plain yet elegant
language.
As an aside, one fascinating thing that has occurred is that, when I go back
and read a passage from the mobile composing period of my dissertation, I
can remember exactly where I was on exactly which Southern California trail
when I wrote it. (Living now in New England, this is often a warming
memory in winter.) This is the mobile composing version of the “memory
palace” in classical rhetoric. And because I would would write a paragraph
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145
over the course of a two hour walk, reading that paragraph feels like a warpspeed
journey over that trail.
I’ve also discovered that Siri, the “personal assistant” on iPhones, is
narcissistic: she always hears “theory” as “Siri”. She is also philosophically
conservative: she hears “Nietzsche” as “shit.”
Four
Research
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Academic Research
A research paper isn’t a book report.
The goal is not to summarize what other people think. It’s to advance the
conversation. That’s why originality in interpretation is so crucial.
Go to your texts, read them, interpret them, analyze them, build an argument
about them, write the paper that presents and demonstrates that argument,
and only then go the scholarship of others.
Your research into scholarship should be conducted relatively late in the
writing process.
Researchers draw a distinction between primary and secondary sources. A
primary source is an object, document, or piece of information that comes
directly from the period or topic under consideration. Examples of primary
sources would be ancient Aztec calendars, the Magna Carta (1215), William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599), the United States Constitution (1787), Anne
Frank’s diary (1947), the 2000 census for Saline County in Kansas, or Barack
Obama’s address to the Democratic National Convention (2004). A
secondary source is a piece of scholarship, written by someone with some
degree of authority on an issue, that offers an interpretation of the objects,
documents, and pieces of information that we class as “primary sources.”
Examples of secondary sources would include an anthropologist’s book
about ancient Aztec astrology, a historian’s article about the origins of
modern civil rights in medieval England, a literary critic’s reading of
purgatory as a theme in Hamlet, a politician’s claim that our secondamendment
rights are in danger, a psychologist’s speculations on the
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adolescent mind under national socialism, a newspaper article in the Salina
Journal lamenting the city’s decreased population, or a public intellectual’s
interview on CNN about the rise of Obama’s political star-power.
A primary source is something that needs to be interpreted; a secondary
source is an interpretation. Or, in the terms of our Elements of Academic
Writing, primary sources are textual evidence and historical evidence, and secondary
sources are scholarly evidence.
Sometimes we take our textual evidence (statistics and examples) from scholarly
books and articles—from secondary sources. Information from secondary
sources comes prepackaged with interpretation. You as an analyst don’t have
the opportunity to examine the information in its pure form, from the ground
up.
It is imperative to any research project that you address the published
scholarship, but don’t start with research. Start by generating some original
insight, perspective, analysis, or argument that might add something to the
conversation.
Thus, gather up your primary sources, analyze them, formulate your argument,
even write an entire paper, and only then look into the scholarship that might
help you develop your ideas and situate your interpretation among the ideas
of others.
If, after doing all your research, you arrive at the opinion that a certain scholar
is correct, then we don’t need you to write a paper to tell us so. What we need
you to do is to identify any gaps or misconceptions in a scholarly
conversation, or to extend the scope and implications of the position that
you’re endorsing in some way.
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— Practicum —
Conceptualizing Your Research
The below questions will help you identify the areas that you need to
research and establish some keywords for conducting your research.
1. What is your research topic?
2. What are your main sources?
3. What are the names of the key people you’re writing about?
4. What areas of historical context might you need to bring into
your project (if any)?
5. What theory—terms, thinkers, or ideas—might you bring into
your project (if any)?
6. What are some synonyms for each of your responses thus far?
7. Make a list of all of these research keywords. Enter each term on
your list in each database you visit to ensure full coverage of the
fields you need to research.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Research Plan
Research Topic: Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Synonyms:
Polonius: father, family, parent, parenting
Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Ophelia, Laertes, Hamlet
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Evaluating Scholarship
There are three categories of secondary sources: (1) low-quality public
sources, (2) high-quality public sources, and (3) academic sources.
In academic writing, avoid low-quality public sources. These are the websites
that might show up if you just do an internet search for your research topic.
Often, these websites have no author listed, or the website looks amateurish.
Who is responsible for this information? Who created it? How can we be
sure the information is accurate? What are the mechanisms of quality control
that have ensured accurate information? It could be some seventh-grader’s
class presentation, but that isn’t a reliable source to rely upon for information.
It could be a business or political organization that is misrepresenting things
to serve an agenda. The information may be accurate, but you’d want to
confirm it in a more reliable source. Don’t put absolute faith in information
taken from low-quality public sources. If you’re writing an academic paper,
you should cite more reliable sources.
Better information comes from high-quality public sources. These include
newspapers, magazines, and media outlets that have mechanisms of quality
control for their information. There’s an author listed who is responsible for
the information. The source comes from an established organization that has
verifiable legitimacy. The organization includes an editorial team that is
responsible for quality control.
The most reliable sources are academic sources. These include articles and
books published by established presses (not self-published books). Academic
sources are reliable because they go through a process known as “peerreview.”
If I want to write an article about Hamlet, I send my article into a
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publication such as Shakespeare Quarterly. They send my Hamlet article off to
three experts on Hamlet. Those three experts read my article and evaluate its
quality. Has the writer considered the right evidence? Are their analyses
convincing? Often, this process is done through what is called “double blind
peer-review”: they don’t know whose article they’re reading, and I don’t
know who’s reading my article. That approach ensures that people are
objectively evaluating the quality of information.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Evaluating Sources
Low-Quality Public Sources:
“Polonius.” Sparknotes,
https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/character/polonius/.
Rizza, Mary. “Parents And Children in Shakespeare — Polonius The
Helicopter Parent.” https://maryrizza.com/hats-off-to-shakespeares-parents-
and-children-polonius-the-helicopter-parent/.
High-Quality Public Sources:
Butler, Catherine. “Hamlet is Shakespeare’s Greatest Villain.” The
Conversation, 13 Oct. 2020, https://theconversation.com/hamlet-is-
shakespeares-greatest-villain-147290.
Minton, Eric. “A Father’s Love: Issues with Daddies in Shakespeare.”
Shakespeareances, 19 June 2015,
http://www.shakespeareances.com/dialogues/commentary/Fathers-
150615.html.
High-Quality Academic Sources:
Stimpson, Catharine R. “Polonius, Our Pundit.” The American Scholar, vol. 71,
no. 4, 2002, pp. 97-108.
Rosenberg, Marvin. “Polonius.” The Masks of Hamlet. University of Delaware
Press, 1992, pp. 257-64.
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Forms of Scholarship
There are many different forms of scholarship (and each one will be cited
slightly differently in your paper), but these are the five most common:
Articles: Peer-reviewed shorter works of scholarship (around 25
pages) that appear in periodicals addressed to general topics (e.g.,
Shakespeare Quarterly).
Chapters: Peer-reviewed shorter works of scholarship (around 25
pages) that appear alongside other chapters in edited books
addressed to specific topics (e.g., Shakespeare and the ‘Live’ Theatre
Broadcast Experience, edited by Pascale Aebischer, Susanne
Greenhalgh, and Laurie Osborne).
Books: Peer-reviewed longer works of scholarship (usually 200-300
pages) with a single author (in contrast to edited books, where each
chapter has a different author).
Essays: Short public-facing (not peer-reviewed) works of scholarship
written for general non-specialist audiences.
Reference Works: Encyclopedias, handbooks, companions, and
overviews that offer introductions, overviews, and key information
(more fact-based introductions than interpretive arguments).
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Finding Scholarship
Before beginning your research, think carefully about how much criticism
you want to bring into your paper: do you want to be the authoritative
statement on this issue (which might mean 50-100 sources), or do you want
to be one voice among many (maybe 5-10 sources)?
What follows is a sequence of actions for finding scholarship in any field or
discipline. A big part of finding scholarship is knowing the discipline-specific
academic resources available to you, but there are some things that can be
generalized for research in all fields.
Identifying Keywords: Before you do any searching, first identify some
search keywords for your research project. The more specific you
can be the better. Create a list of keywords and expand that list by
adding synonyms for your keywords. For example, a research project
on “Renaissance theology” could include synonyms for
“Renaissance” such as “early-modern,” “sixteenth century,” and
“Elizabethan” and for “theology” words like “religion” and
“spirituality.” As you perform your searches, you’ll discover which
keywords and synonyms work best together, and you’ll probably
discover new keywords that you didn’t know applied.
Search Strategies: After identifying your keywords for searching,
familiarize yourself with advanced searching strategies such as
Boolean connectors (AND, OR, and NOT), searching for phrases
(e.g. “dumb cop stereotype”), truncated searches (e.g. psychopath*
will return psychopath, psychopaths, psychopathy, psychopathic,
Finding Scholarship
156
etc.), and wildcard searches (e.g. wom?n will return woman or
women).
Mining References: Mine the references of the books and articles you
read. When you find a work of scholarship that is closely related to
the issue you’re dealing with, look at the references and notes in that
article closely because you’ll be able to find other sources that are
also very relevant.
Identifying Landmark Scholarship: Make note of the names and studies
that continually arise as you search for your topic, since this
constancy probably indicates a certain popularity and influence,
which often (though not always) means it includes a quality argument
to which you’ll want to give special attention. What is the absolutely
essential reading (1-3 sources) that everyone who writes on your
topic needs to address? What names or works are repeatedly
referenced in a wide number of studies?
Start a Working Bibliography: A bibliography is simply a list of sources.
Once you’ve planned your research, start a working bibliography to
fill with references that may be important for your research project
(or you might use a research program such as Endnote). Exactly how
many references to include in your bibliography will depend on the
kind and length of the paper you’re writing. Consult your assignment
and your instructor, but usually one reference per assigned page is a
good number to shoot for.
Public Resources
As in life, in academic research you get what you pay for. Ideas freely floating
around the internet are free for a reason: they’re usually low-quality. Don’t
Google your keywords and expect the first ten results to be the ten best
sources for your research. The analyses found on a Wikipedia or a Sparknotes
page are meant to be helpful to a vast number of people, but they’re also
surface level.
Public online databases like Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) are
wonderful for the curious mind, but they aren’t reliable enough to cite in an
academic analysis. The same can likely be said of sites linked to from a
Wikipedia page, which can be consulted to familiarize yourself with an issue,
and possibly to help populate your working bibliography, but don’t read or
cite them as authoritative. It is not a crime to search around on the internet
to familiarize yourself with a topic. All of us do it. This web-surfing should
be thought of, however, as introductory research rather than advanced
research, which is what you’ll need to conduct in order to write a compelling
academic paper.
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Google News (https://news.google.com) can be helpful for recent and
emerging topics. Keep in mind that the quality of articles will be mixed.
Google Books (https://www.books.google.com) is helpful because it allows
you to search full texts in very specific terms, and it includes recent books
that might not have made their way into databases, but it also offers only
partial previews (20 pages or so), snippet views (3-5 lines), and no previews
of many texts. If possible, search Google Books while physically at a library,
where you can then seek out and access hard copies of any books needed for
your research.
Google Scholar (https://www.scholar.google.com) is more academic and
will provide higher-quality sources. Two features on Google Scholar are
especially helpful.
First, the “Cited By” feature will take you to more recent works that
cite the older article you originally found. The “Cited By” system
isn’t perfect, but it often allows you to trace the descendants of
important articles and to find (by intelligently repeating “Cited By”
clicks) the most recent scholarship relevant to your research topic.
Second, the “Related Articles” feature will take you to older articles
that are cited by the original article you found. Clicking around with
the “Cited By” and “Related Articles” features will help you build up
your list of newer and older sources.
Academic Resources
After you’ve clicked around on the internet enough to familiarize yourself
with a topic in general, begin your serious academic research by going to your
academic library’s homepage.
Textbooks, Encyclopedias, Handbooks: Start your academic research with some
discipline-specific resources: textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias. These
works are great for finding overviews of trends, topics, common ideas, and
classic studies in a given field, and their references will provide a good place
for you to begin or refine your working bibliography.
Bibliographies and Companions: Next, go to some slightly more involved
discipline-specific resources: bibliographies and companions. These research
aids are usually much more extensive than textbooks, dictionaries, and
encyclopedias, which is good for finding sources that aren’t widely known.
Discipline-Specific Resources: After you’ve reviewed these introductory and
reference works, it’s time to start searching for the scholarly articles and
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books upon which those overviews are based. There are primarily four ways
that you can discover and track down articles and books:
Discipline-Specific Research Directory: Often, you can find (through the
library or on the internet) a discipline-specific research directory that
can point you to various resources.
Discipline-Specific Databases: You’ll want to make sure that you spend
some serious time in some discipline-specific databases.
Discipline-Specific Journals: You should also identify and explore some
discipline-specific academic journals.
General Academic Databases: Finally, look at some general academic
databases such as Academic Search Complete and JSTOR.
At the Library: At the library, continue your research by looking for an
annotated bibliography on your topic or text. Also search the library’s catalog
for any books that didn’t appear in your other searches. Finally, go to the
section of the library stacks devoted to your text or topic, and browse the
shelves for any titles that might be relevant to your research.
Repetition and Confidence: If you search for your keywords in these resources,
you’re likely to get some duplicate results from your earlier database searches,
but you may also get some important articles that may not have popped up
in your earlier searches. Moreover, you’ll start to gain a sense that you actually
know what’s out there. Sometimes it can be nerve-wracking to say, for
example, that previous critics haven’t addressed some issue that you want to
address because you aren’t entirely sure of everything that’s out there. The
more you search around, the more confident you will become that you’ve
seen all that’s out there.
Finding Scholarship
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Possible Sources
Baluk-Ulewiczowa, Teresa. “The Bad Quarto Hamlet and the Polish Connection.”
Shakespeare in Europe: History and Memory, edited by Marta Gibińska and Agnieszka
Romanowska. Jagiellonian University-Jagiellonian University Press, 2008, pp. 35-43.
Bennett, Josephine Waters. “Characterization in Polonius’ Advice to Laertes.”
Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1953, pp. 3-9.
Broadus, E.K. “Polonius.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 1935, pp. 337-
355.
Budrewicz, Aleksandra. “The One Gentleman from Poland: Polonius and 19th Century
Polish Translation.” Shakespeare: His Infinite Variety, edited by Grzegorz Zinkiewicz
and Krystyna Kujawińska Courtney. Jagiellonian University Press, 2019, pp. 87-100.
Eisendrath, Rachel. “Polonius as Anti-Close Reader: Toward a Poetics of the Putz.” The
Work of Reading, edited by Anirudh Sridhar, Derek Attridge, and Mir Ali Hosseini.
Springer, 2021, pp 153–172.
Erlich, Avi. Hamlet’s Absent Father. Princeton UP, 1977.
Falk, Doris V. “Proverbs and the Polonius Destiny.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 18, no.
1, 1967, pp. 23-36.
Hartwig, Joan. “Parodic Polonius.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 13,
no. 2, 1971, pp. 215-225.
Paul, Joanne. “The Best Counsellors are the Dead: Counsel and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.”
Renaissance Studies, vol. 30, no. 5, 2016, p. 646-665.
Stimpson, Catharine R. “Polonius, Our Pundit.” The American Scholar, vol. 71, no. 4,
2002, pp. 97-108.
Taylor, Myron. “Tragic Justice and the House of Polonius.” Studies in English Literature,
1500-1900, vol. 8, no. 2, 1968, pp. 273-281.
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Reference Works
Use reference works when you need to contextualize your analyses.
Use Wikipedia to familiarize yourself with a topic, fine, but don’t cite it. It’s
a resource, not a source.
Reference works—encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, companions,
study guides, and so forth—are a nice alternative when you need contextual
information for a paper but are faced with, on the one hand, the unreliability
of Wikipedia and, on the other, the overwhelming sea of scholarship in
academic books and articles. Reference works provide readers with
knowledge that is both authoritative (because it was written by a specialist
and peer-reviewed) and accessible (because it was written as an introduction
to a topic).
There are general reference works—something like Encyclopedia Britannica—
but every academic field has field-specific reference works, things like The
Oxford Companion to Shakespeare or The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal
Justice. These discipline-specific reference works are the best place to find
reliable contextualizing information on a topic.
When writing a paper, don’t quote reference works. You can better provide
that information—more concisely and in a way that is tailored to your own
argument—through summary and paraphrase.
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Accessing Scholarship
With the rise of online education, not everyone can just walk across campus
to a library. There are four main resources available for accessing scholarship.
Public Libraries: If you’re looking for a popular book or periodical, a
local library might have it.
Bookstores: It’s OK to pull a book off the shelf, take a seat in the aisle,
and read through it enough to determine if you need to bring it into
your research project.
Academic Libraries: Libraries on university campuses usually have
more holdings—especially scholarly books and articles—than public
libraries.
The Internet: It will be hit-and-miss. Sometimes a scholarly source
you’re looking for is freely available online. Usually, however, there
will be some sort of paywall or login required.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Key Quotations
Stubbes, George (attributed). Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet. W. Wilkins,
1736.
It is evident by the whole Tenour of Polonius’s Behaviour in this Play, that he
is intended to represent some Buffoonish Statesman, not too much fraught with
Honesty. (23)
Hazlitt, William. Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. C.H. Reynell for R. Hunter and C.
and J. Ollier, 1817.
It is said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no
inconsistency in that. (86)
Jusserand, Jean Jules. A Literary History of the English People. Putnam, 1909.
The Polonius family is first shown as a family of honest people, virtuous and
upright. They trust each other. The question of the young prince, evidently in
love with Ophelia, causes them all anxiety. Laertes gives his sister sound
advice. Polonius acts toward his son as a prudent and affectionate father ; the
precepts with which he provisions the young man on his going abroad have
been laughed at by critics, but only to make his character at the beginning of
the play fit in with his character at the end. The old courtier is hard on poor
Ophelia, which is quite comprehensible: he is a man of the court, he is
advanced in years, he naturally understands better the chances of disfavour than
he does a young girl’s love troubles. (3.320-21)
Dreher, Diane. Domination And Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare.
University Press of Kentucky, 1986.
By far the most reprehensible father is Polonius. (52)
Stimpson, Catharine R. “Polonius, Our Pundit.” The American Scholar, vol. 71, no. 4,
2002, pp. 97-108.
Polonius’s domains have expanded from literature to life, where he has become
a label, a social category. Since my experiences of Polonius in literature and
life, I have wondered who and what a Polonius in a modern state might be. He
is, I have decided, a powerful figure in a large institution, preferably the
executive branch of the federal government. However, he moves easily among
institutions. He can work in the private sector or a think tank or a public policy
school in an affluent private university. When he is not in the government, and
is instead rusticating in the private sector, he likes being a pundit. In that role,
he enjoys writing op-ed pieces and going on television.
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Citation
Remember to cite your sources, whether you are quoting, paraphrasing,
summarizing, or utilizing ideas or information someone else has published.
Academic writing employs formal styles for citation, but different disciplines
use different styles. The three most popular academic styles are MLA style,
APA style, and Chicago style.
Regardless of the style being used, there are two parts to any citation: an intext
citation and a bibliographic reference. The format of the citation and the
reference will differ depending on the style in use.
MLA style uses a Works Cited page. APA style uses a References page.
Chicago style uses endnotes.
Regardless of the citational style you’re using, it will cite different kinds of
sources slightly differently. It’s important to have a reliable manual to provide
guidance on all the details.
MLA Style
MLA style does not use footnotes or endnotes for citations (though those
notes can be used for other purposes). Instead, MLA style uses parenthetical
citations. As such, MLA documentation consists of two parts: (1)
parenthetical citations in the text that refer readers to a Works Cited page,
and (2) a Works Cited page filled with entries that include complete
bibliographic information.
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MLA In-Text Citation: An in-text citation in MLA style usually includes two
key pieces of information: the author’s last name and a page number. When
you quote or paraphrase, include a page number, since you’re quoting or
paraphrasing a specific page. When you summarize, don’t include a page
number, since you’re summarizing the entire source. When a source has no
known author, your in-text citation should use a shortened title of the work
instead of an author’s name. When a source has no known page numbers
(such as a film or website), simply omit that element of your in-text citation.
There are a few different ways to format an MLA in-text citation. The
author’s last name and the page number can both appear in parentheses after
a quote or paraphrase, as in this example: “There are different ways to format
an MLA in-text citation” (Wilson 2). Whenever possible, however, you
should make the author or title you’re referring to clear in your introduction
of the quote or information; if you do so, you don’t need to state the
author/title in your citation, only the page number. For example, according
to Jeffrey Wilson, “Make the author or title you’re referring to clear in your
introduction of the quote” (2). The one exception to this rule is when citing
reference works: because the information is probably not controversial, keep
the focus on that information and identify your source in a parenthetical
citation rather than in your sentence. Note that, in the quotes in this
paragraph, the end punctuation comes after the parenthetical citation. If a
quotation is three lines or fewer, incorporate it in your text and enclose it in
double quotation marks, as in the quotes above. If a quotation is four lines
or more, it should be block-quoted, meaning that it is displayed in a
freestanding block of text, indented one inch, without quotation marks. Note
that, in a block quote, the end punctuation comes before the parenthetical
citation.
MLA Works Cited: After the last paragraph in an MLA-style paper, force the
document to begin a new page for the Works Cited page. The Works Cited
page should still have the one-inch margins all the way around and have the
heading of last name and page number. Center the word “Works Cited” at
the top of the page (but don’t put it in quotes, make it bold, or otherwise
stylize it), and keep the page double-spaced throughout, with no extra space
between entries. Items in a Works Cited page will be alphabetized by the first
word of each entry (author’s last name or title of work). Each entry will use
a hanging indent, meaning that lines after the first should be indented half an
inch. Because the URLs in a Works Cited page are not underlined, remove
the hyperlinks so that URLs will be formatted correctly. MLA guidelines for
citations are extremely detailed. Each citation must follow the format
specified in the most recent edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of
Research Papers, which at the time of this writing is the ninth edition,
published in 2021. Be very cautious of information about MLA style that is
available on the internet, as it is often outdated, incomplete, sloppy, or just
wrong.
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APA Style
APA style does not use footnotes or endnotes for citations. Instead, the APA
documentation system consists of two parts: (1) parenthetical citations in the
text that refer readers to a list of references, and (2) entries in the list of
references that include complete bibliographic information.
APA In-Text Citation: In APA style, you must include two bits of information
about a source: the author’s last name and the date of publication. There are
multiple ways to do so, but remember that it is always best to include the
author in your own sentence. In APA style, article titles and book titles are
not commonly used in the text of a paper. Instead, the author and year are
the important elements of an in-text citation. Articles and books are cited
the same way in the text (note that they are cited differently in your
References):
– was challenged by Lewissohn in 1999.
– Freedman (2006) postulates that individuals …
– According to Rockett & McMinn (1990), traffic fines over the time
period reflect “the local magistrate’s bias against minorities as well
as anyone living in Osage County” (p.278).
– Peterson et al. (2009) claimed that the majority of these convictions
were obtained “through the most fraudulent of courtroom
practices” (para. 2).
APA References: Your references should be listed on their own page. Center
the word “References” at the top of the page. APA guidelines for references
are extremely detailed. Each reference must follow the format specified in
the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association.
Chicago Style
Chicago style cites sources using footnotes or endnotes (it doesn’t matter
which you use: different journals and different teachers prefer different
formants). As such, Chicago-style documentation consists of two parts: (1) a
numerical note in the text that refers readers to a footnote or endnote, and
(2) a note that includes complete bibliographic information and commentary
if needed.
Chicago Style Notes: To create a footnote or endnote, use your word processing
program’s note function (in Microsoft Word, this is found under Insert, and
then Footnote…). If you do so, your notes will remain tied to the place in
the text to which they apply (e.g., if you add a new footnote at the start of
the paper, note #1 will automatically become note #2). When using a source,
you should make the author or title you’re referring to clear in your
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166
introduction of the quote or information. Once you’ve cited a text with a
note that gives the full bibliographic information, subsequent references to
that work can be cited in-text as long as it’s clear which work you’re referring
to. For example, let’s say you wanted to quote Jeff Wilson on Chicago style.
The first reference would require a note: “This paper is formatted in Chicago
style, which is a style often used in the Humanities.”1 Subsequent references
to Wilson could be cited in-text “as long as it’s clear,” Wilson says, “which
work you’re referring to” (4). Note that, in footnoted quotes, punctuation
comes inside the quote, but in subsequent in-text citations the punctuation
comes after the parenthetical citation.
1 Jeffrey R. Wilson, “A Sample Chicago-Style Paper,” in This is How to Write
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 235. As you can see in
this note, Chicago-style conveys bibliographic information in footnotes and
endnotes (as in the previous sentence), but it also allows for commentary in
these notes (as in the current sentence).
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Annotated Bibliographies
An annotated bibliography is a list of sources that you have read and plan to
include in a research project. An annotated bibliography is made up of a series
of annotations, or brief notes about each of the sources. The design and
length of an annotation vary based on its purpose and the discipline you’re
working in. Sometimes you will see annotations that are only one or two
sentences, but usually a good annotation runs between 200-400 words.
Some annotated bibliographies include headnotes, brief paragraphs that
summarize and give an overview on the general topic of the annotated
bibliography. To write a headnote, you should return, after writing your
annotations, to the beginning of your document to write an introduction that
summarizes the key issues that are covered in the annotations. This
introduction will help you see how your texts are “talking” to one another,
which will allow you finally to revise your annotations to include points of
agreement and disagreement (i.e., where the essays complement each other
and where they contradict each other).
Kinds of Annotations
Broadly speaking, there are three kinds of annotations: descriptive,
evaluative, and prospective:
– Descriptive Annotations: As the name implies, a descriptive annotation
describes, summarizes, or analyzes an article or book—especially its
evidence and argument—without rendering a judgment about it.
– Evaluative Annotations: An evaluative annotation not only describes but
also evaluates the source, identifying its strong and/or weak points.
Annotated Bibliographies
168
– Prospective Annotations: What I call a prospective annotation describes
and evaluates a source but also explains how you the writer will be
using this source in the paper or project you’re working on.
In my courses, I usually ask for descriptive annotations because I like for
students to view annotations as part of the reading process. As
always, writing helps you understand what you’re reading. I encourage students
to hold off on evaluation for a bit because it’s best to collect all of your
information first (or at least as much of it as possible) before you start making
claims about it—but be aware that in other classes you may be asked to do
other kinds of annotations. As always, the key is to be aware of the situation
so that you can ask your instructor what the requirements and expectations
are.
Structure for Annotations
For a quick and clean structure for a 300-word descriptive annotation, you
might include the following elements of academic argument:
Citation: Your citational style will depend upon the discipline in
which you’re writing. Make sure you get it right!
Author: Not even a sentence: just give a clause about someone’s
academic specialty en route to your statement of that writer’s text. No
one cares where someone is a professor nor even the fact that
someone is a professor (so don’t say, “Peter C. Herman, Professor
of English at San Diego State University, addresses …”); what
people care about is someone’s academic specialization (e.g. “Peter
C. Herman, a scholar of sixteenth-century literature and culture,
addresses …”). One way to provide some information about the
author is to mention a book or article he or she has written that’s
relevant to the topic at hand.
Text: One sentence (or the rest of a sentence) detailing the topic
under consideration. Try to mention the material as well as the
conceptual aspects of the text—e.g., “Shakespeare scholar Julia
Lupton addresses the imagery of circumcision in The Merchant of
Venice.”
Problem: One sentence articulating the critical conversation or debate
entered into by the author (only if applicable).
If, for example, a writer is disputing or extending an earlier study,
this is where you would describe that maneuver.
Method: One sentence articulating the interpretive approach or
theoretical position used to unpack the text (only if that approach or
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169
position is noteworthy, sophisticated, or specialized). You don’t
need to say, for example, that someone gathers a great deal of
fascinating evidence and analyzes it in compelling ways that really
support his or her thesis. In theory, that’s what all academic writing
does. But you would want to note if, say, an author used
Wittgenstein’s philosophy to unpack Milton’s poetry.
Argument: One or two sentences providing a summary of the main
idea. If you’re going to quote in an annotation, this is the place to do
it. If you’re aiming for a shorter annotation, you can skip the text
statement, and even the problem and method statements, and go
straight into the argument (e.g., an annotation could begin, “Literary
critic Martin Harries argues that …”).
Evidence: One to three sentences summarizing the information
presented in support of the argument. Try to give an overview and
synthesis of the evidence as well as one particularly poignant
example, if possible.
Implications: One sentence describing what’s at stake in the argument,
either according to the author or according to yourself: why does it
matter? who cares? how did/will it impact an academic field?
A good annotation will not necessarily include all of the above information;
the best annotations draw out the aspects that make a book or article unique
and develop quality accounts of these points.
Nor does an effective annotation need to work sequentially through this
information; often a writer will use the organization of the book/article to
structure the annotation, touching upon relevant points from above as they
appear in the course of the source.
Moreover, in annotations, it is often possible to combine categories of
academic information into single sentences, such as a single sentence that
covers both text and method, or a single sentence that covers
both method and argument.
Process for Annotations
Here’s a four-step process for writing annotations:
– Marginalia: Start out by reading a source and making marginal notes
on the elements of academic argument (question/problem, method,
thesis, evidence, analysis, counter, etc.) as I come across them. That
will help me understand the totality of a source on its own terms.
Annotated Bibliographies
170
– Diagram of Evidence: Create a diagram of the kinds of evidence used
in the source (textual, historical, citational).
– Quotes for Major Elements: Pull out quotations for the major elements
of academic argument associated with the introduction
(question/problem, method, thesis, stakes), as well as the main
assertions for each major section in the body of the essay.
– Write it Out: Synthesize and summarize all this information into a
300-word paragraph that follows the below structure.
Annotated Bibliographies
171
— Practicum —
Building an Annotated Bibliography
The below steps will help you build an annotated bibliography of at least
five scholarly sources that are relevant to the issue you’re examining in
your research project.
1. Create a Preliminary Bibliography that includes:
– A Text Statement
– Your Primary Source(s)—i.e., textual evidence
– At least 10 possible Secondary Sources—i.e., Critical
Scholarship
Note that your Secondary Sources should all be Critical
Scholarship. You very well may be using Historical
Scholarship or Theoretical Scholarship in your research
project, but the best use of an Annotated Bibliography is
to collect up scholarly interpretations of the text or topic
you’re addressing.
What if there’s no scholarship out there on your topic?
That’s, in fact, a good position to be in because it means
that there is a need for scholarship on your topic. For the
purposes of this bibliography, conceptualize your topic
in broad enough terms that you’re tapping into an
existing scholarly conversation.
2. Create an Annotated Bibliography that includes five 300-word
descriptive annotations.
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37
Plagiarism
From the Latin plagiarius, “kidnapper, seducer, plunderer,” plagiarism is the
use of another person’s words, ideas, or efforts as if they were your own,
without giving credit to the source. Don’t be a plunderer.
Ignorance is not a valid excuse. Sometimes, writers truly do not understand
what plagiarism is, and plagiarize unwittingly or unintentionally. But
ignorance is not an excuse for unethical academic conduct.
A long list of examples—Jayson Blair, John Walsh, Jonah Lehrer, Melania
Trump, Monica Crowley—shows that plagiarism can come back to haunt
you. Plagiarism done when you’re 20 years old and don’t think it matters can
return when you’re 40 to derail the career you made for yourself.
In that sense, plagiarism can be seen as tragic: the thing you do to make
yourself great can be the very thing that brings that greatness crashing down.
With respect to writing, questions of plagiarism can be divided into the ethical
issues associated with passing someone else’s words off as you own and the
technical issues associated with the misuse of sources.
To avoid the ethical issues of plagiarism, you just need to be honest and
vigilant. The technical issues of misuse of sources—plagiarism done through
negligence or lack of knowledge or skill—are much more difficult. You need
to know when and how to cite things. You need to have the technical skills
to avoid things like “mosaic plagiarism,” where someone changes around
some words (because they know they shouldn’t directly copy someone else’s
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173
words) but doesn’t significantly change the order of ideas—resulting in a case
of plagiarism.
The Five Kinds of Plagiarism
There are five specific kinds of plagiarism. Let’s look at each, using this
source and passage as an example:
Grady, Hugh. “Shakespeare Criticism, 1600-1900.” The Cambridge
Companion to Shakespeare. Edited by Margreta de Grazia and Stanley
Wells. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 265-78.
During his lifetime Shakespeare was virtually unknown outside his
island nation. If he was recognized by some in England as a preeminent
poet and dramatist, he was also occasionally eclipsed by his
rivals, and his reputation was always undercut by the controversial
status of London’s public theatres. The godlike esteem he has
achieved today around the world would have been incomprehensible
in his own time, both to him and to his peers. (265)
Verbatim Plagiarism: Directly copying someone’s words without attribution.
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is surprising because during his lifetime Shakespeare was virtually
unknown outside his island nation.
Mosaic Plagiarism: Not copying someone’s words exactly, but just swapping in
synonyms or slight changes to phrasing—without identifying your source.
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is surprising because he was virtually unknown outside his island
nation in his own day. In the seventeenth century, Ben Jonson was
more highly regarded than Shakespeare, whose reputation was
always undercut by the controversial status of London’s public
theatres. Shakespeare has grown into a demi-god, but the esteem he
has achieved today around the world would have been
incomprehensible in his own time, both to him and to his peers.
Inadequate Paraphrase: Identifying your source, but not fully transforming its
ideas into your own words.
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is especially surprising because, as Hugh Grady has illustrated, in his
own age Shakespeare was not well known outside England. Some
may have seen him as a powerful author, but at times he was
overshadowed by his contemporaries, and his status was hampered
Plagiarism
174
by the low esteem of the public theatres in London. His popularity
today would be surprising to both him and his contemporaries.
Uncited Paraphrase: Fully transforming your source’s ideas into your own
words but forgetting to identify your source.
Shakespeare was celebrated by some critics, denigrated by others,
but his massive popularity today would have been unfathomable to
anyone in the seventeenth century.
Uncited Quotation: Directly quoting your source but forgetting to identify it
and/or give the page number that the quote comes from.
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is especially surprising in light of his relative of security in his own
age: “The godlike esteem he has achieved today around the world
would have been incomprehensible in his own time, both to him and
to his peers.”
Acceptable Versions
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is surprising because “during his lifetime Shakespeare was virtually
unknown outside his island nation” (Grady 265).
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is surprising because, as Hugh Grady has discussed, “during his
lifetime Shakespeare was virtually unknown outside his island
nation” (265).
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is surprising because he was not well known outside England in his
own day (Grady 265).
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is surprising because, as Hugh Grady has discussed, he was not well
known outside England in his own day (265).
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is especially surprising in light of his relative of security in his own
age: “The godlike esteem he has achieved today around the world
would have been incomprehensible in his own time, both to him and
to his peers” (Grady 265).
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is especially surprising in light of his relative of security in his own
Plagiarism
175
age. As Hugh Grady put it, “The godlike esteem he has achieved
today around the world would have been incomprehensible in his
own time, both to him and to his peers” (265).
Shakespeare’s status as a global superstar in the twenty-first century
is especially surprising in light of his relative of security in his own
age. As Hugh Grady has illustrated, he was celebrated by some critics
and denigrated by others, but his massive popularity today would
have been unfathomable to anyone in the seventeenth century (265).
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38
Literature Reviews
A literature review summarizes the previous scholarship on a topic. It’s where
you show that you’ve done your homework, where you celebrate the good
work that has come before you, and where you identify the shortcomings of
earlier scholarship.
We humans love to watch conflict: it’s what explains the popularity of
professional wrestling, reality television, and US politics. In your papers,
exploit your reader’s desire to see conflict by staging your argument as part
of a heated debate.
But don’t manufacture conflict. That’s obviously unethical. If you get to the
end of a research project, and you decide, “Yep, Robin Stewart nailed it; he’s
right; he said everything that I wanted to say, and he said it better than I
would have said it,” then you shouldn’t try to drum up some imaginary
insufficiency in the criticism. But you should also know that, if this ends up
being the case, we don’t need your paper to tell us that someone has already
gotten it right.
Represent people’s ideas accurately. Most scholars are quite happy to be
disagreed with if their positions have been accurately represented. Imagine
the people you’re critiquing reading your critique of them: would they be
happy with the way you’ve represented their ideas?
A single-source or multi-source paper has a question/problem that grows out of
the text(s): some discrepancy, difficulty, ambiguity, or gray area that demands
interpretation. That’s question/problem1. A research paper that includes
scholarly sources must have two kinds of question/problem: it has that initial
Literature Reviews
177
discrepancy, difficulty, ambiguity, etc. in the text, but it also identifies some
insufficiency in the scholarly conversation devoted to that text. That’s
question/problem2.
That is the point of a literature review: to identify an insufficiency in a
scholarly conversation.
When you write a literature review, don’t simply provide a list of who said
what. Your literature review needs to tell a story. It should be an analysis of
the analyses, a critique of the critics. There needs to be an argument to your
literature review, that argument being your justification for your paper. Why,
given the existing scholarship related to an issue, does your paper need to be
written?
Group the scholars who have written on the subject into camps—maybe
based on time period, maybe on theoretical approach, maybe on argument.
Narrate the history of these different camps to demonstrate how and why
this critical conversation does not ultimately account for the text under
discussion.
Try to adopt a “latest and greatest” approach to literature reviews: try to
include the most recent, cutting-edge scholarship, as well as the older,
foundational works in the field.
Citation is the coin of the realm in academia. Jobs and promotions hinge on
it. Use citations to support the work of scholars who face systematic bias in
academia.
Strategies for Literature Reviews
When writing a literature review, there are two broad strategies you might use
to justify the need for an additional interpretation: the “all wrong” way and
the “all right” way.
All Wrong: The “all wrong” way to justify the need for additional
interpretation is to collect all the available interpretations of a text,
present them, put them into camps, and then suggest that they’ve all
gotten the interpretation of the text under consideration dead wrong
(or, more softly, that these interpretations haven’t gotten the text
quite right). In this model, the scholarly conversation is insufficient
because it displays mistakes, misunderstandings, misconceptions,
misrepresentations, etc. In your paper, you’re going to offer the right
way of looking at the issue as a corrective to this deficient scholarly
conversation.
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178
All Right: The “all right” way to justify the need for interpretation is
to collect all the available interpretations of a text, present them and
affirm their accuracy and value, but then claim that additional
interpretation is needed on top of what is currently available because
what is currently available doesn’t get to the real issue, which is what
you’ll be addressing in your paper. In this model, the scholarly
conversation is insufficient because it has gaps, blind spots,
unaddressed phenomena, etc. In your paper, you’re going to fill in
this gap in the scholarly conversation by giving attention to what has
been overlooked by previous writers.
You can combine these approaches, the “all wrong” way and the “all right”
way. Your research project may involves one handful of critics who address
an issue related to yet not focused on your particular focus (you’re not going
to dispute them; you’re just talking about something different than what
they’re talking about) and another handful of critics who have addressed the
issue you’re addressing, but they’ve gotten it wrong (so you’re going to
provide a different, better reading).
Here are some more specific strategies that may be useful to have in your
repertoire for literature reviews:
– The Redirect: The field has focused on a certain line of thought—and
that’s wonderful—but there exists an unadresssed question or
problem that you’re going to take on.
– The Further Development: A certain scholar has suggested an idea that
you’re going to develop more fully.
– The New Phenomenon: Something new has emerged into the world and,
simply because it is so new, it hasn’t been addressed in the existing
scholarship.
– The Mistaken Interpretation: A commonly accepted idea about a topic
is simply wrong, and you’re here to correct the record.
– The Giant Killer: Rather than engaging with the totality of a field of
scholarship, you’re going to engage deeply with a certain
foundational scholar or argument that has been especially influential.
– The Methodological Intervention: A change of theoretical approach will
enable a change of analytical argument.
Quote sparingly especially when dealing with secondary criticism (as opposed
to your primary text[s], which you should quote from more liberally). Usually,
you should quote other critics only when (1) they provide key terms or ideas
Literature Reviews
179
for your argument, (2) you couldn’t summarize or paraphrase them more
succinctly, or (3) you’re arguing against them. If you’re going to take issue
with someone’s ideas, it’s best to let them speak for themselves (and that
helps prevent you from misrepresenting their position, which often happens
in critical disputes). Otherwise, summarize and paraphrase their ideas in your
own words.
Structuring Literature Reviews
Structure your literature review into your introduction. Introduce your text,
explain the driving question (question/problem1), present your literature review,
then explain what the insufficiency in the scholarly literature is
(question/problem2), all to justify the existence of your paper.
Thus, the structure of an introduction for a research paper (on the model of
The Q&A but with a literature review added) might look like this:
Paragraph 1: Question/Problem Statement
– Orientation
– Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraph 2: Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: Thesis Statement
– Text
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Putting Critics in Conversation
Stubbes (1736): Polonius is the worst. He’s an idiot politician.
Warburton (1747): Totally. Can’t stand that guy. So annoying. He just talks and talks and
talks but says nothing.
Johnson (1765): Maybe he was once decent, but now he’s just old.
Hazlitt (1821): I mean, I like the things he says but hate the things he does.
Hunter (1845): Shakespeare was probably making fun of one of the politicians of his
time.
Jusserand (1909): I don’t know folks. I don’t think Polonius is so bad.
Everyone Else: Shut up. Get lost.
Gollancz (1904): Isn’t it weird that Polonius’s name suggests he’s from Poland, but the
play is set in Denmark?
Stubbes: You’re a huge dork.
Broadus (1935): Buckle up people. I’m about to tell you the history of all the sources
Shakespeare used to create Polonius.
Hazlitt: I hate everything about you.
Bennett (1953): I think Shakespeare was making fun of Polonius.
Falk (1967): Have you ever noticed that Ophelia also starts talking in proverbs when she
goes mad at the end of the play?
Taylor (1968): Polonius is pure evil, and I’m glad Hamlet murdered him.
Johnson: Whoa, dude, a bit harsh.
Hartwig (1971): Shakespeare wasn’t just making fun of Polonius. He used Polonius to
make fun of the other characters.
Dreher (1986): You are all totally missing the point. Polonius is a reprehensible patriarch
and misogynist who does his daughter so wrong.
Stimpson (2002): I feel like there are so many Poloniuses today: those rich politicians
who mansplain everything on cable news.
Robinson (2009): I think Shakespeare having Polonius get murdered was a critique of the
patriarchy Polonius represents.
Paul (2016): That’s why, in Shakespeare’s day, they used to say, “The best counsellor is
a dead counsellor.”
Taylor: YES! Murder Polonius! Dude is Satan.
Eisendrath: There’s a word for what Polonius is. He’s a “putz.”
Stubbs: Total putz.
Johnson: An old putz.
Gollancz: A Polish putz.
Broadus: A putz from many sources.
Taylor: An evil putz.
Dreher: A patriarchal putz.
Robinson: A dead patriarchal putz.
Literature Reviews
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Literature Reviews
182
Into the Essay
Literature review.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Studies of Shakespeare and alcohol filter into two lines of thought. The first—
older and more prominent—is about individuals and the morality of excessive
consumption. Shakespeare presented moderate drinking as “a sign of hospitality or
friendship,” Trawick wrote, but “excessive drinking often leads to unhappiness, disaster,
even death,” and “alcohol is associated with murder in a significant number of
instances.” Stephen Greenblatt worked Shakespeare’s frequently tragic scenes of alcohol
up into the observation that he “depicted heavy drinkers from close-up—he noted the
unsteadiness of their legs, the broken veins in their nose and cheeks, their slurred
speech,” and then into the conjecture that Shakespeare’s father, John, may have fallen
from grace as an alcoholic. Alcohol suggestively surfaced in Shakespeare’s own life, at
least in apocryphal recollections. One story from John Aubrey’s Brief Lives (1669-96)—
though disputed—gives an abstemious Shakespeare avoiding the party scene: he was not
a “company keeper … wouldn’t be debauched, and if invited to, writ: he was in pain.”
Another story—also dubious—from the diary of John Ward, vicar of Stratford from
1662-81, offers the counter-image of Shakespeare drinking himself to death:
“Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too
hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.” Scholars looking at
Shakespeare’s texts and times have shown that his antipathy to alcohol was consistent
with and influenced by contemporary moral entrepreneurs, from religious homilies and
prose satires to King James and contemporary dramatists. Breakthroughs in this line of
thought came in 2009 when David Houston Wood argued that Shakespeare represented
excessive drinking as “a disabling disease that should properly be termed alcoholism,”
and in 2013 when Rebecca Lemon identified challenges to English law in Shakespeare’s
depiction of alcoholic criminals. Since then, critics have emphasized the sympathetic,
rather than judgmental, aspects of Shakespearean characters associated with alcohol, like
Falstaff and Mistress Quickly.
The second line of thought—newer and less developed—shifts attention from
the individual to the cultural aspects of alcohol in Shakespeare’s plays. Nations came to
be associated with their alcohols and drinking habits. “The characterization of the
Englishman as a beer-drinker reflects a growing sense of national identity and racial
stereotyping,” Charlotte McBride wrote in 2004. Alcohol imported from foreign
countries signified an emergent globalization, and the alcohol trade brought opportunities
to exchange cultural traditions of alcoholism, as illustrated in the 2016 collection
Culinary Shakespeare. “Every time wine appears in Shakespeare’s plays,” Karen Raber
argues, “it activates ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ as concepts—at once newly revivified
yet still fluid—that rely on a body/state analogy.”
Mixing these two lines yields a new question. What does the tragedy of
alcoholism look like when identified not in an individual but in an entire culture?
Shakespeare’s emphasis on culture contrasts with the focus on an individual’s thirsty
adventures and psychological despair in the modern literature and film of alcoholism.
Yet our question is not only one Shakespeare asked in Hamlet; it is also one sociologists
ask about American teenagers.
.
Six
Structure
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39
Organization
Having a good idea is not the same as having a good paper: an idea is an
interpretation, a paper an articulation. Don’t allow your good ideas to be
murdered by bad papers.
Structure is the secret to success in advanced academic writing. It’s all about
structure.
To be effective, a paper must be properly organized, a word we take from
the Greek organon, which means “that with which one works.” Consider the
organs in your body: there are individual organs (the heart, the lungs, the
liver), and there are organ systems (the circulatory system, the respiratory
system, the digestive system). For your body to function, each organ system
must perform a general task for which it is responsible, and within each
system each individual organ must perform a specific task for that system to
work. Your body only works if each of its internal parts does the task it is
responsible for, and the same is true of your papers.
At some point, you may have been taught “the five-paragraph essay,” an
approach to organization commonly used in high-school writing and
standardized tests. Forget everything you know about the five-paragraph
essay, but also don’t. Forget the idea that all arguments can be made in five
paragraphs—one that is an introduction, three that give examples, and one
that offers a conclusion. Forget that your opening paragraph must end with
your thesis, which specifies three important points, one for each of your three
body paragraphs, after which you recap those points in a conclusion.
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185
Don’t forget, however, that argumentative essays almost always follow the
general outline of introduction, body, conclusion: first introduce an issue and
make a claim about it, then support your claim with detailed discussion, and
finally conclude by considering the implications of your claim. Any argument
that you ever make for the rest of your life will be more complex than this,
but it is important to understand this general movement.
Having a good structure will eliminate repetition. Academic papers, especially
shorter papers (up to 10 pages), are so short that you only have time to say
something once, so you have to say it (1) in the right place and (2) in a way
that your reader is going to remember.
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40
Outlines
One way to start writing a paper is to start writing it. That’s the worst way to
start a paper.
To avoid sprawling writing with no direction, write out your entire paper in
outline form. Don’t just make an outline—though that’s a good idea too.
Actually write out the paper, full sentences and all, in outline form.
Doing so will ensure that you’re putting in all the right information in all the
right places because it makes it easy to see the function that a sentence is
performing (not the content of the sentence, but the Element of Academic
Writing it presents).
Writing in outline form makes it easier to consider the structure of your ideas,
which is a key aspect of revision.
Create your outline using the terminology from our Elements of Academic
Writing.
There are two kinds of outlines to consider—a basic outline and a detailed
outline.
A basic outline is the sort that you are probably familiar with already. It offers,
in short phrases and notes, a quick overview of the paper you plan to write:
the topics to be addressed and the order in which you plan to address them.
In a basic outline, you’ll need to specify all the information pertinent to the
major parts of the paper (introduction, body, and conclusion), as well as the
sections and, if needed, the paragraphs within each sections of the body of
the paper. A basic outline should include a working thesis statement written
out in one or two sentences. Apart from that thesis, keep your labels to five
Outlines
187
words or fewer. You’re not making points here, just marking down the points
that need to be made.
A detailed outline is probably less familiar to you. It comes later in the writing
process, and it is something that you will return to and recreate several times
along the way to a finished paper. If a basic outline covers the ideas you’re
addressing and the order in which you’re addressing them, a detailed outline
adds the claims you’re making about those ideas using complete sentences.
That’s right—your detailed outline will use complete sentences, but your
complete sentences will be structured in outline form so that you can see and
manipulate the structure of the paper, its parts, sections, paragraphs, and
sentences.
To start a detailed outline, create a basic outline. Then, using complete
sentences, and tagging your information with the appropriate Element of
Academic Writing, outline your proposed paper.
In a detailed outline, for introductory and concluding material, tag your
information and write out full sentences. For body paragraphs, write out the
key assertion for each body section and, if needed, each body paragraph; then
just use a bulleted list to note your evidence (all the various kinds: textual,
historical, and scholarly).
Outlines
188
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Basic Outline
Introduction
Paragraph 1: Critics Who Hate Polonius
• Hate Polonius Because of His Foolishness: Stubbes, Warburton,
Johnson, Hazlitt
• Hate Polonius Because of His Misogyny: Dreher, Robinson
Paragraph 2: Thesis Paragraph
• Text/Method
• Thesis
• Stakes
Body
Section 1: Polonius’s Possible Prehistories
Paragraph 1.1: Polonius as a Polish Immigrant
Paragraph 1.2: Polonius as a Danish War Hero
Paragraph 1.3: Polonius as a University Actor
Paragraph 1.4: Polonius as a Widower
Paragraph 1.5: Polonius as a Danish Government Official
Section 2: Polonius as a Single Father
Paragraph 2.1: His Wordiness as Dad Jokes
Paragraph 2.2: Sending His Son Off to College in a Different Country
Paragraph 2.3: His Daughter Romantically Involved with the Prince
Paragraph 2.4: His Decision to Put His Career Before His Family
Paragraph 2.5: His Attempt to Save the Queen
Paragraph 2.6: The Effect of His Death on His Family
Conclusion
Paragraph 1: Argument Statement
• Counter: Stimpson on Poloniuses in Society
• Response:
• Argument
Paragraph 2: What’s at Stake
• Parenting in Hamlet
Paragraph 3: The Idea
• Hamlets as a Step-Family
Paragraph 4: The Examples
• King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius
Outlines
189
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Detailed Outline
Introduction
Paragraph 1: Problem Statement
• Question/Problem1: Your wife dies. You raise two children on your own. You
build a successful career to provide for your family. You send your son off to
college in another country, even though he’s not ready, and it rattles you.
Apparently now the prince wants to marry your daughter—that’s not an easy
situation to navigate. Then—get this—the prince murders you while you’re
trying to save the queen’s life. Your death destroys both of your kids. They die
tragically. And what do you get for your troubles? Centuries of Shakespeare
scholars dumping on you.
Paragraph 2: Literature Review
• Text.Ev: Many echo Hamlet’s characterization of Polonius as a “tedious old
fool” and “foolish prating knave.”
• Crit.Cit: In 1736, the first essay ever written on Hamlet called Polonius a
“Buffoonish Statesman.” Samuel Johnson saw an old man “declining into
dotage.” William Hazlitt thought Polonius “talks very sensibly” but “acts very
foolishly.” Closer to our time, Diane Dreher also hated Polonius—”by far the
most reprehensible father” in Shakespeare’s plays—but for a different
reason. He’s a patriarch, a misogynist, an authoritarian who dominates
Ophelia’s will and decimates her zest for life. “The death of Polonius,” Elaine
Robinson argues, “is a symbol of Shakespeare’s attack on patriarchy.”
Paragraph 2: Thesis Statement
• Counter: Polonius isn’t a good father.
• Response: Good fathers don’t make good drama.
• Question/Problem2: His failings are central to my argument that Polonius is a
good character, more complex and sympathetic than critics usually recognize.
• Text/Method: This defense grows from viewing Polonius not through the eyes
of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—the point of view Shakespeare’s play asks
audiences to adopt—but through the lens of the common challenges of twentyfirst-century
parenting.
• Thesis: For Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance who
sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being.
• Stakes: And that perspective opens up other modern resonances of the family
dynamics in Shakespeare’s plays, such as the rocky stepfamily that Prince
Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, and King Claudius find themselves in.
Body
Section 1: Shakespeare’s play includes traces—only hints that must be imaginatively
fleshed out—of Polonius’s possible prehistories.
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The Writing Process
Paragraph 1.1: His name points to Poland, one of Denmark’s foreign enemies, a quality highlighted
by the change of the character’s name in the first quarto, Corimbus.
• Text.Ev: “Corimbus” / “Polonius” (1.2.56)
• Text.Ev: “So frowned he once, when in an angry parle / He smote the sledded Polacks on
the ice” (1.1.61-62).
Paragraph 1.1: Perhaps Polonius is an immigrant from Poland.
• Crit.Cit: Hunter, Gollancz, Broadus, Cole, Alexander, Kilman, BalukUlewiczowa,
Budrewicz
Paragraph 1.2: Or Polonius could be an agnomen, like “Coriolanus,” an honorary name
bestowed upon him for his military service.
• Crit.Cit: Weiss
Paragraph 1.3: The only clear bit of backstory that Shakespeare gives about Polonius is that he was
an actor at university.
• Text.Ev: 3.2.91
• [HAMLET] You played once i’th’ university, you say?
POLONIUS That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
HAMLET What did you enact?
POLONIUS I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’ Capitol— Brutus killed me.
HAMLET It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.
• “The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoralcomical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene
individable or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the
law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.” (2.2.324-28)
• “well spoken, with good accent and good discretion” (2.2.388-89)
• “This is too long” (2.2.420)
• “That’s good” (2.2.426)
Paragraph 1.4: When and how Polonius met his wife, Ophelia and Laertes’s mother, is unclear, but
she seems to have died.
• That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries “Cuckold!” to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother. (4.2.118-19)
Paragraph 1.5: Perhaps a grieving Polonius threw himself into his job, climbing the ranks of King
Hamlet’s council to become a leading advisor to Denmark’s royal family.
• “The head is not more native to the heart, / The hand more instrumental to the mouth, /
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father” (1.2.47-49)
Section 2: The hints of Polonius’s prehistory provides context for the scenes where we actually
meet the man.
Outlines
191
The Writing ProcessParagraph 2.1: I read Polonius’s verbosity as dad jokes.
• “Tender yourself more dearly / Or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase / Wronging
it thus—you’ll tender me a fool” (1.3.106-08)
• “brevity is the soul of wit / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes. / I will be
brief” (2.2.90-92)
Paragraph 2.2: Any father would struggle sending a son with a penchant for youthful rebellion off
to college in another country.
• 1.2.51-59
• 1.3.54-82
• 2.1-71
Paragraph 2.3: Frankly, as a father, I don’t know what I would do if I heard the heir to the crown in
my country had declared he was deeply in love with my daughter: that’s a very challenging
parenting situation, to say the least.
• 1.3.87-135
• 2.1.71-116
Paragraph 2.4: Let’s hope most fathers wouldn’t, like Polonius, put their job ahead of the wellbeing
of their daughter, although we sadly see that situation all the time.
• 3.1.42-184
Paragraph 2.5: Ultimately, Polonius gives his life for his job: he comes out of hiding to protect the
queen, and becomes a victim of murder by and unhinged aristocrat who then callously plays games
with the dead body.
• 3.4.21-33
Paragraph 2.6: Polonius’s death breaks his children.
• 4.2
Conclusion
Paragraph 1: Argument Statement
• Counter: In 2002, Catharine R. Stimpson suggested that there are many Poloniuses in
society today, those rich politicians who mansplain everything on cable news:
He is, I have decided, a powerful figure in a large institution, preferably the
executive branch of the federal government. However, he moves easily among
institutions. He can work in the private sector or a think tank or a public policy
school in an affluent private university. When he is not in the government, and
is instead rusticating in the private sector, he likes being a pundit. In that role,
he enjoys writing op-ed pieces and going on television.
• Response: There are the public Poloniuses that Stimpson describes and the private
Poloniuses I have sought to recover.
• Argument: Behind the bumbling pundits are many working fathers who have made
questionable decisions about their work-life balance. He’s not a good father. I hate his
patriarchal parenting. I would also say that, if push came to shove, and I had to pick
which of the parents in Hamlet I would want as my own, it would be Polonius.
Outlines
192
The Writing Process
Paragraph 2: What’s at Stake
• His complexity brings clarity to the other parents in Hamlet. King Hamlet is a
father who asks his son to murder someone, which ends up destroying the
child’s life. Queen Gertrude is a mother who marries her dead husband’s
brother, then is baffled that her son is struggling. King Claudius is a stepfather
only because he killed his stepson’s actual father. Shakespeare filled the play
with bad parents.
Paragraph 3: The Idea
• On the one hand, each parent, like Polonius, put their career before their
kid, resulting in the deterioration of the family. On the other, the Hamlet family
is, like the Poloniuses, weirdly relatable in modernity, where stepfamilies are
common. If Polonius shows what can happen when a family loses a parent, the
Hamlets are an example of separation, remarriage, and efforts to negotiate a
new family dynamic—that’s all there before the murder of King Hamlet comes
to light. And each parent has enough traces in the text to suggest a backstory
that contextualizes any easy judgment of their parenting.
Paragraph 4: The Examples
• King Hamlet is the divorced father who both hates seeing his ex-wife with a
new man and uses his child as leverage in a power play against her. Queen
Gertrude is the single mother who wants to feel romantic love for the first time
in a while but fails to appreciate how her new romantic life affects her child’s
emotions. And King Claudius is the new step-father who just wants everyone
to be happy and tries to relate to his step-son but finds himself in an
emotionally combustable situation.
Paragraph 5: Another Turn of the Screw
• The impulse is to say, Oh, Shakespeare’s families are so modern. It may be
better to note that the term “non-traditional family” is absurd because history is
filled with single parents and stepfamilies in which the challenges of work-life
balance are heightened—and everyone’s a critic
193
41
Introductions
Don’t start with any version of the statement, “Humankind has always ... ,”
or, “Since ancient times … ”.
Don’t begin with some random quote from a Socrates or a Machiavelli.
And don’t start with a definition from Webster’s Dictionary.
In your introduction, get straight into the text you're interpreting, or at least
the conceptual tension that you'll be exploring in that text.
The key elements associated with the introduction are:
– Text: The thing being interpreted. The text is the work, object, event,
or topic being discussed, even if that work, object, event, or topic is
not a book.
– Author: Information a paper tells its readers about the biography of
the person who wrote it; this information may help explain why this
person is making the argument that he or she is making.
– Question/Problem: The author’s motive for writing a paper, often
framed as a difficult question that demands interpretation or an
unresolved or incorrectly resolved question. In short, why a paper
needs to be written.
– Critical Scholarship: A reference to another writer who has interpreted
the same text as the author; such writers will often be marshaled to
support an analysis or argument or used as a counter that the author
responds to.
Introductions
194
– Method: The interpretive strategy used by the author to interpret his
or her text. Often where terminology is defined.
– Theoretical Scholarship: A reference to a writer whose ideas (often
abstract or philosophical) are relevant to the interpretation of a text,
even though that writer doesn’t directly discuss this particular text or
its historical context.
– Terminology: A word or phrase, often crucial to the author’s argument,
that he or she takes special care to define or discuss.
– Thesis: The basic proposition of an interpretation. A snapshot of the
Argument.
– Stakes: The larger conversations an argument is contributing to. The
pay-off. The bigger picture. Actionable knowledge. A snapshot of
the Implications.
Your introduction doesn’t need to be just one paragraph. Having a longer
introduction is perfectly fine, even encouraged, as you move toward more
sophisticated writing.
There are many ways to structure an introduction. It helps to have a clear
sense of your method and to know what you’re planning to say when you get
to your conclusion. Below are some possible models to work with.
Note that these models are for research papers that include scholarly
citations. If you’re doing a single-source paper or a multi-source paper, you
can adapt these models by eliminating the literature reviews.
Introductions
195
Into the Essay
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
As first argued by Juliet Dusinberre in Shakespeare and the Nature of Women
(1975), Shakespeare seems to have been attentive and opposed to the systematic
mistreatment of women during his age yet, whenever I think about gender in Hamlet,
something just feels wrong.1
According to the Penguin edition, there are 3,834 lines in
the play.1
Only 325 of them are spoken by women, Ophelia (170 lines) and Gertrude (155
lines), the only two women in the play out of the more than 30 characters listed in the
dramatic personae. Although roughly half of the human population is made up of
women, they make up roughly 7 percent of the characters in Hamlet and speak roughly 8
percent of the lines in the play.
This present absence of women has led modern writers like John Updike, Lisa
Klein, and Alice Birch to reimagine the story of Hamlet from Gertrude’s or Ophelia’s
perspective.1
It has led feminist critics to ask why the role of women is so diminished in
the play. Is this evidence of sexism on Shakespeare’s part?1
Of sexism in Shakespeare’s
society?1
And what do we do with the fact that the most celebrated play in the history of
English literature systematically ignores half of humankind?1
These were the questions Lisa Jardine posed at the start of her foundational
feminist study Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of
Shakespeare (1983).1
Identifying “two main lines of approach to Shakespeare’s drama
within a feminist perspective” (1), Jardine mapped out, first, the view of a proto-feminist
Shakespeare who “transcend[ed] the limits of his time and sex” (2); and second, the view
of an “oppressively chauvinistic” early-modern English society (3). Within this second
approach, Jardine noted, “one may identify, as it were, an aggressive and a nonaggressive
strand” (3). The aggressive strand “sees Shakespeare’s work as out-and-out
sexist, and sets out to uncover his prejudices to the reader” (4), while the non-aggressive
strand “takes it that Shakespeare did his best … but that contemporary society’s limited
understanding of women combined with his own male viewpoint have skewed the
resulting picture” (3).
After rather fearlessly dissecting the discourse on Shakespeare and gender in
these terms, Jardine flinched. She abandoned the question of Shakespeare’s attitude
toward the feminine for a reason that is not, to me, very compelling. Seeking shelter
behind one of the clichés of new criticism (famously formulated in Shakespeare studies
when L.C. Knights asked “How many Children Hath Lady Macbeth?”1), Jardine wrote,
“Whether the critic decides that Shakespeare’s plays contain inspired insights or warped
fantasies of womanhood, the two schools seem to agree in their assumption that
Shakespeare’s characters are susceptible of analysis as people” (6). It then becomes clear
that Jardine’s resistance to seeing Shakespeare’s characters as people – something which
I, like Michael Bristol, see as not only permissible and philosophically coherent but also
the whole point1
– is bound up with a resistance to seeing Shakespeare as a person.
Shifting from the truisms of new criticism to those of new historicism, she presented
Shakespeare as a being without much agency who was formed by the powers that be,
unthinkingly reflecting “the patriarchy’s unexpressed worry about the great social
changes which characterize the period” (6). Here early-modern English society was just
as conflicted about the feminine as Shakespeare, which may be true, but which does not
satisfy our desire to know how he as a living, breathing, thinking artist represented
women. To me, that remains the pressing and pertinent question even after we have
acknowledged Shakespeare’s situatedness in society: How did he represent women?
.
Introductions
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The position that Shakespeare was an unthinking conduit of Elizabethan
misogyny is as unsatisfying as the position that Hamlet is a full-throated feminist
manifesto. As Dusinberre would say, the “social conduit” reading takes away from
Shakespeare an individual intellectual and artistic agency that is impossible to deny – he
was clearly a thoughtful man and a deliberate playwright. As Jardine would point out, the
“proto-feminist” reading, with its deliberately anachronistic language, takes away from
Shakespeare the Elizabethan culture that clearly exerted a deep influence upon him – he
was clearly a man of his time. Moreover, these efforts to identify Shakespeare as a friend
or enemy to the modern feminist cause obscure the more complicated reality that he is
probably both.
Yet such questions have not been pursued in recent feminist Shakespeare
studies. In the twenty-first century, feminist Shakespeareans such as Ann Thompson,
R.S. White, Cristiane Busato Smith, Sujata Iyengar, and Jess Carniel have turned – with
good reason – to performance, adaptations, appropriations, and other modern receptions
of Hamlet.1
That turn centers Ophelia, who is finally given space to shine as a character
in modern refractions that speak back to Shakespeare, who is decentered in these
readings. And feminist Shakespeare studies such as Ania Loomba and Melissa Sanchez’s
Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies (2016) and Valerie Traub’s Oxford
Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment (2016) have focused – with good reason – on
overlapping identity categories of gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, ability, age, and
the intersectionalities among them.1
That focus still emphasizes character over author, as
in Tobin Seibers’s account of Ophelia’s gendered mental illness from the angle of
Disability Studies, or Emily C. Bartels’s reading of gender and race in “Hamlet the
Dane.”1
Significantly, Traub’s account of Dusinberre, Jardine, and the first wave of
feminist Shakespeare studies ends without answers: “Fairly soon, however, such postures
of defence and attack faded to the background.”1
Marianne Novy’s Shakespeare and
Feminist Theory (2017) concurs: “It is now hard to find new scholarship debating
whether Shakespeare was a feminist.”1
Did feminist Shakespeareans silently agree that
Shakespeare was – or wasn’t – sexist, and move on? Have feminist Shakespeare scholars
satisfactorily responded to the pressing question that students and fans of Hamlet
persistently ask: is it a sexist play? Is this a question worthy of further debate—was
Shakespeare, relative to his time and place, progressive on gender issues? Often our
scholarship—far beyond feminist studies, far beyond Shakespeare studies—does a deep
dive into history and theory (thank goodness: that’s what scholarship is designed to do)
but then avoids the return to the big ethical and political questions that prompt our
interest in literature in the first place.
Identifications of someone or something as sexist can be uncomfrotable. In
literary studies, we are told to avoid an intentional fallacy that projects authorial intent
backward from textual evidence. Yet in our daily lives we regularly identify sexism
based on people’s words and actions. I shudder to image a world where we couldn’t
identify sexism when we see it. Why treat Shakespeare any differently, especially in an
era of #MeToo and #TimesUp where frank and open discussion of the pervasiveness of
gendered inequality and violence has increased social power for women. That, as
Dympna C. Callaghan reminds us, is the goal: “That welfare remains the impetus of
feminist critical analysis, and as such it behooves us to examine the gap between the
apparent assimilation of feminism into the critical mainstream and the still secondary
status of women in the world.”1
.
Introductions
197
A full introduction from a research paper.
Unconscious bias – the notion that we can harbor and practice prejudice and
discrimination which we are unaware of, even if we purposefully and valiantly despise
and resist bigotry – has emerged as a prominent concern in recent social scientific
research, led by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald.1
This field of inquiry
originates in the observation that much of human history involves claims that one tribe,
one religion, one race, one nation, one gender, one sexual orientation, and so forth – in
short, one identity – is better than another. Of course, mine is always better than yours:
narcissism (love of the self) easily spills over into bigotry (hatred of the other). In highly
developed nations such as the twenty-first-century United States, however, overt bigotry
is declining because (in philosophical terms) we lack any sort of universal criteria by
which we might evaluate the intrinsic worth of one identity over another, and (in more
practical terms) prejudice and discrimination are now widely frowned upon if not railed
against in public. Admittedly, the resurgence of openly racist, sexist, ableist, and classist
rhetoric in the Trump era leaves us uncertain about future directions of this trend.1
In
most quarters, however, explicitly bigoted groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the
Westborough Baptist Church are seen as fringe movements full of loonies. Thus, in the
United States today, the problems of prejudice and discrimination are largely unspoken;
they are to be found in the way American society is structured and operates. Women
make less money than men who do the same jobs. Black men get longer prison sentences
than white men who commit the same crimes. Why do these social injustices persist? It’s
not because of a widespread belief in the superiority of men over women and whites over
blacks, as was once the case. Instead, that history of prejudice and discrimination, even
though it has been widely disavowed, has resulted in the social empowerment of men and
whites over women and blacks. Those in power, even if they abhor bigotry, hold
unconscious biases in favor of their own, resulting in a tension, Banaji and Greenwald
write, “between our intentions and ideals, on one hand, and our behavior and actions, on
the other.”1
Structural inequality engenders unconscious bias, and in turn unconscious
bias fosters structural inequality.
Attending to a comparable gap in Shakespeare’s text, this essay argues
that Hamlet is not misogynistic in the sense that it promotes the superiority of men and
the inferiority of women. In fact, Hamlet critiques misogyny and patriarchy by
configuring them with tragedy, yet the Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet still held an
unconscious bias against women. In other words, Hamlet exhibits a structural sexism that
is different from and more difficult to discern than the overt sexism of misogyny and
patriarchy. Hamlet is therefore a powerful literary example of the way that, even when
someone is trying to be ethically progressive on gender issues, unconscious bias can
remain.
.
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42
The Q&A
This is the gold standard for structuring an introduction. Use it when your
essay is built around analyzing a single text or topic.
Section 1: The Question
– Orientation
– Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Section 2: The Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Section 3: The Answer
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
Notes:
– Create a section break after the first paragraph.
– Your literature review may need to be more than one paragraph.
– After the end of the introduction, create a section break, and start
the body of the essay.
Introductions
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Into the Essay
A full introduction in the Q&A model.
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
For a dramatic work, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has made a remarkable splash in
Western philosophy. As detailed in Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster’s Stay,
Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine (2013) and Andrew Cutrofello’s All for Nothing:
Hamlet’s Negativity (2014), the play has inspired reflection from major philosophers like
Hegel, Nietzsche and Derrida, and the play prompts philosophical introspection and
conversation in us every time we read or see it. We are thus highly attuned to Hamlet’s
place in philosophy, but what is the status of philosophy in Hamlet? That is the question
of this essay.
The definition of philosophy here will be somewhat wiggly because the
definition of philosophy in Shakespeare’s texts is vague and inconsistent. Sometimes it
refers to metaphysical philosophy (about being-qua-being), sometimes to natural
philosophy (what we now call science), sometimes to ethical philosophy (about virtuous
action), and sometimes to any high-minded thought at all. There are two instances of the
word “philosophy” in Hamlet (1.5.169 and 2.2.368), both toying with the line between
natural and metaphysical philosophy, but many more passages sound vaguely
philosophical, such as those containing the lines: “I know not ‘seems’” (1.2.76–86); “To
thine own self be true” (1.3.58–81); “The dram of evil” (Appendix B); “There is nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (2.2.251–52); “A king of infinite space”
(2.2.256–57); “What a piece of work is a man” (2.2.305–10); “Our thoughts are ours,
their ends none of our own” (3.2.202–04); “May one be pardoned and retain th’offence?”
(3.3.36–72); “Use almost can change the stamp of nature” (Appendix G); “What is a
man” (Appendix J.24– 26); “We know what we are, but not what we may be” (4.5.42–
43); “Alas, poor Yorick” (5.1.180–90); “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” (5.2.8–
11); “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (5.2.165–68); and – of course
– “To be, or not to be” (3.1.57–91), which is probably the most famous line in the most
famous passage in the most famous play by the most famous artist in Western history.
. . .
This passage is so famous that the Shakespearean scholar Douglas Bruster
recently wrote an entire book about just this one soliloquy, looking at its imagery,
structure and meaning, but also at its “philosophical force” (31), its “philosophical
insight” (31) and its “chilling philosophy” (102). Bruster concluded that the soliloquy is
not about suicide, as many modern readers, such as John Dover Wilson, believe it to be
(“a like expression of utter weariness is not to be found in the rest of human literature”
[127]). On the contrary, Bruster argued (channelling Schlegel, Coleridge and Shel- ley)
the speech “mocks human achievement and ability” insofar as Hamlet is trying to be
philosophical but Shakespeare was critiquing him for, in Bruster’s words, “thinking too
much” (103). I do not want to wag my finger too harshly at Bruster because his book,
published in the Shakespeare Now series, was written for a general audience, yet he did
that audience a disservice when he presented Hamlet as a failed philosopher being
mocked by Shakespeare. He did that audience an even greater disservice when, in an
entire book about the “To be, or not to be” speech, he did not take seriously the dramatic
context of the speech that, as Bruster knows, radically changes the meaning of its
“chilling philosophy”.
.
Introductions
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Consider when Hamlet cowers at the finality of death, of the afterlife, of “The
undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns” (3.1.81–82). This line is
acutely problematic – as one of Shakespeare’s earliest editors, Lewis Theobald (8.165),
first noted in 1733 – because Hamlet has recently seen his father’s ghost return from the
grave. Has Hamlet “in a moment of deep despon- dency” forgotten about his father’s
ghost and his final words, “Remember me” (1.5.91), after just two short months (this was
Dover Wilson’s reading [74])? That is unlikely because Hamlet’s whole world has
revolved around the ghost’s appearance for that entire time. Perhaps Hamlet is now
convinced, as both he and Horatio have considered, that the spirit was not his father’s
ghost after all but a “goblin” (1.4.21) or a “devil” (2.2.601). This solution is also
unlikely, because the scene prior to “To be, or not to be” concludes with Hamlet stating
that he does not know what the spirit was and that he is going to stage “The Mousetrap”
to determine the truth of the spirit’s charge against his uncle (2.2.590–607). Maybe there
is no contradiction here at all because King Hamlet’s spirit is returning from purgatory,
which is only halfway to “the undiscovered country”, and travellers can come back from
there (this was Theobald’s answer; his account of the theology involved was as watertight
as it was newly invented for this specific case). Maybe, technically speaking, King
Hamlet didn’t return (only his spirit returned), so there is again no contradiction. Or
maybe it wasn’t Hamlet but Shakespeare who forgot about King Hamlet’s ghost. Maybe,
while in the throes of writing what would become the most famous passage in his most
famous play, Shakespeare forgot about or, even more radically, just ignored the plot of
Hamlet in order to write a poetic speech that could be plucked from the play and stand
alone as a poignant philosophical statement on human suffering.
Or maybe Hamlet doesn’t mean what he says. This suggestion has the virtue of
retaining the unity and coherence of Hamlet, even within the scene in question. For
shortly after Hamlet’s famous soli- loquy, he turns to Ophelia, who has been standing off
to the side, and asks, “Are you honest?” (3.1.105), and then moments later, “Where’s
your father?” (3.1.132). In this scene, Ophelia is indeed acting as her father’s agent:
Polonius has sent her to see if Hamlet is really mad. As Hamlet’s ques- tions to Ophelia
indicate, he knows that she is working for Polonius and that he is being watched. “Are
you honest?” No. “Where’s your father?” Behind the curtain. But when does Hamlet
know that he is being watched? In most productions, Hamlet hears Claudius and Polonius
shuffle or sneeze behind the curtain while he is speaking with Ophelia, then becomes
suspicious, and then starts berating her. However, Shakespeare’s text does not require
this reading. In fact, the quarto editions of Hamlet all place the stage direction “Enter
Hamlet” before Claudius and Polonius hide, and there is no stage direction indicating that
those two exit the scene. It was only in the later folio edition that there is an “Exeunt” for
Claudius and Polonius followed by “Enter Hamlet”, the arrangement adopted by most
modern editions. It is at least possible that Hamlet sees and is aware of Claudius,
Polonius and Ophelia. It is possible that Shakespeare intended for Hamlet to
deliver his “To be, or not to be” speech knowing that he was being watched. If so, then
“To be, or not to be” may not be the profoundly philosophical moment it has been taken
to be by centuries of readers. It may be, instead, what someone says when he wants
others to think he is crazy.
. . .
The idea that Hamlet knows he is being watched has been most forcefully illustrated by
the Shakes- pearean scholar James Hirsh. He has argued on several occasions that
“substantial, conspicuous, and varied pieces of evidence demonstrate that Shakespeare
designed the ‘To be, or not to be’ speech to be perceived by experienced playgoers of his
time as a feigned soliloquy” (“The ‘To be, or not to be’ Speech”, 34). Hirsh’s evidence –
Introductions
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which is convincing – goes beyond a close reading of the scene and its context in Hamlet
to include additional Shakespearean examples of feigned soliloquies (such as Edmund’s
“O, these eclipses do portend these divisions” in King Lear [1.2.131–32]), overheard soliloquies
(such as Juliet’s “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” in Romeo and
Juliet [2.1.75]), and eavesdroppers being deceived and eavesdropped upon (such as
Benedick in Much Ado and Malvolio in Twelfth Night). Hirsh also points to two nonShakespearean
feigned soliloquies which allude specifically to “To be, or not to be”: La
Fin’s in Chapman’s The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron (3.1) and Orgilus’s in
Ford’s The Broken Heart (1.3). And Hirsh narrates the historical shift from Renaissance
drama, where soliloquies were understood as words spoken out loud by a character, to
modern drama, which reconceived soliloquies as a character’s innermost thoughts only
expressed in words for the benefit of the audience. At one point Hirsh exclaims, with
exasper- ation, that seeing “To be, or not to be” as a glimpse into Hamlet’s mind because
that is how it is usually played in modern performances is like believing that Ophelia was
played by a woman in the Elizabethan theatre because that is how she is usually played
today. And Hirsh dismantles, with palpable frustration, the argumentative gymnastics
that editors (Harold Jenkins, Burton Raffel and Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor), critics
(S.T. Coleridge, E.E. Stoll and Robert Speaight) and actors (Henry Irving) have proposed
in an attempt to erase the problems presented by “To be, or not to be” and to salvage the
sincerity and philosophical power of the soliloquy.
In the acknowledgments for his To Be or Not To Be book, Bruster wrote that
he “benefitted” from Hirsh’s studies (105), but clearly Bruster was not convinced.
Consider Bruster’s chapter titled “The Speech in Context”, which addresses the basis of
Hirsh’s argument. “The presence of a perceived audience onstage would change our
sense (as well as Hamlet’s) of the direction and function of his words”, Bruster wrote,
before turning to wilful ignorance in a surprising way: “It may be permiss- ible to think
that the soliloquy has enough thought in and around it – prompts so much thinking and
interpretation on its own – that we are allowed, with Hamlet, momentarily to forget that
he may be overheard at his most intimate moment” (74–75). Impressionistic aesthetic
judgement does not strike me as solid ground for selective forgetfulness.
Our situation at present, therefore, is that Bruster’s philosophically oriented
interpretation hastily dismisses the dramatic context of “To be, or not to be”, while
Hirsh’s contextually oriented interpret- ation does not consider an important implication
of that reading, specifically what it says about Shakespeare’s attitude toward the kind of
philosophical introspection represented in the “To be, or not to be” speech. In an effort to
mend this gap, this essay is a philosophically oriented reading of “To be, or not to be”
which takes seriously the dramatic context of the speech. I ask why, if Hamlet knows he
is being watched, Shakespeare would choose philosophy as the language Hamlet uses to
feign mad- ness. What was Shakespeare saying about philosophy?
. . .
I address this question by attending to the differences between philosophy and
drama. On the most basic level, philosophy is about knowing while drama is about doing:
these words come from the Greek σοφία, “wisdom”, and δρᾶν, “to do”. More
specifically, the start of Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be, or not to be”, invokes the form of
philosophy called ontology, derived from the Greek ὀντο-, “being”. Ontology is, in
Martin Heidegger’s definition, “that theoretical inquiry which is explicitly devoted to the
meaning of entities” (Being and Time 32): the study of being-qua-being. Incidently, the
word ontology (or rather, ontologia) was coined by Shakespeare’s German contemporary
Jacob Lorhard in 1606, just a few years after Hamlet was first staged. Lorhard used the
term ontology interchange- ably with the term metaphysics, and Shakespeare would have
thought about the concerns of ontology in terms of Aristotlean metaphysics, the study of
first and supreme causes and principles, supernatural and supersensible substance and
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structure, that which does not change, which remains true in all times in all places.
Metaphysics was set off against both natural philosophy, with its theoretical attention to
sublunary matters, and ethical philosophy, with its practical concern for virtuous action.
With these distinctions in mind, we can note that what Critchley and Webster called
Hamlet’s “ontological question” (11) is really an ethical question veiled in the language
of ontology, as registered in Heidegger’s retort to Hamlet: “Why are there beings at all
instead of nothing? That is the question” (Introduction to Metaphysics 1). Thus, Hamlet’s
soliloquy invokes both metaphysical philosophy (in its language of “being”) and ethical
philosophy (in its concern with “action”).
Like ethics, drama is about action, but drama is also about acting. Hamlet
draws much of its energy from the tension between the ethical action the protagonist
wants to take and the theatrical acting he does instead. As James Calderwood emphasised
in his reading of Hamlet, drama allows an actor “to be and not to be” a character; a play
operates simultaneously as dramatic illusion and theatrical reality in ways quite foreign to
the quest for the fundamental nature of reality in metaphysics. Thus, the basic dramatic
phenomenon of acting has historically been a spur in the side of philosophy, going back
to Plato, as Jonas Barish discussed in The Antitheatrical Prejudice: “The key terms are
those of order, stability, constancy, and integrity, as against a more existentialist
emphasis that prizes growth, process, exploration, flexibility, variety and versatility of
response. In one case we seem to have an ideal of stasis, in the other an ideal of
movement” (117). Philosophy and drama are by no means antithetical, but the “ideal of
stasis” in metaphysics and the “ideal of movement” in drama generate “fundamentally
different types of endeavour” with different assumptions and motives, as Martin Puchner
argued when unpacking “the anti-theatrical prejudice in philosophy and the antiphilosophical
prejudice in theatre” (541).
I want to suggest that Shakespeare did not care about the questions of
metaphysical philosophy, and that he satirised metaphysics in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to
be” speech because he thought acting was more important than being. That is,
Shakespeare valued human action and interaction, including the social roles we perform
like actors playing characters on a stage, over abstract knowledge about existence
generated through theoretical reasoning. Stated as such, this thesis is perhaps obvious
but, if it can be shown to underwrite Shakespeare’s composition of Hamlet’s “To be, or
not to be” soliloquy, then the popularity of that passage seems to rest upon a fundamental
misreading. While it seems to be a suffering man’s account of the battle between action
and contemplation, and thus Shakespeare’s representation of tragic angst, a consideration
of the dramatic context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually
Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. “To be, or not to be” is
a clever deception the cleverness of which can be measured by how often it is taken as
profound philosophy. If so, then a close reading of this passage might help us locate
Shakespeare in the history of Western philosophy, as I attempt to do toward the end of
this essay.
To be clear, I am not searching here for the philosophy “behind” Shakespeare’s
plays. Nor am I looking at appropriations of Shakespeare in modern philosophy. Nor am
I trying to use modern philosophy to read Shakespeare. These approaches are quite lively
in Shakespeare studies at the moment, but I am instead interested in revisiting an older
question asked by Sidney Lee in 1899 and by Rolf Soellner in 1962: What was
Shakespeare’s attitude toward philosophy? At the same time, just as the Shakespeare
described in this essay used philosophy to do drama, I am interested in the possibility of
using Shakespeare to do philosophy – specifically, to philosophise about philosophy.
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A Q&A introduction without the research component—i.e., without a literature review.
From What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College
Every fall, millions of parents send millions of children off to college for the
first time and must find something ceremonious to say to the sons and daughters we’ve
been able to mold, mentor, guide, and save (from themselves) as they step out of our
control into a world that—frankly—they don’t understand, couldn’t possibly understand.
William Shakespeare wrote a scene about this event. It comes in his most
famous play, Hamlet, and has one of his most quoted lines: “To thine own self be true.”
This line has inspired countless valedictorian addresses. Films such as The Last Days of
Disco and Clueless riff on it. People tattoo it on their bodies. A friend of mine went to a
school where students were asked to sign every letter with their names and “To thine own
self be true,” even though none of them knew where the line was from or what it meant.
Indeed, what does “To thine own self be true” actually mean? Be yourself?
Don’t change who you are? Follow your own convictions? Don’t lie to yourself?
Determining the meaning of this line—and thus Shakespeare’s advice for young men and
women on their way to college— depends to some extent upon the meaning of “self,” the
meaning of “true,” and perhaps even the meaning of “meaning.”
Grammatically speaking, the word self usually appears as part of a reflexive
pronoun (“myself,” “yourself”), but it has emerged as a noun (“the self”) because it does
useful psychological work. What is “the self”? What is it that you are true to when you
are “true to yourself”? A “self” usually refers to who a person really is, an internal
condition or reality that might be hidden behind the exterior or visible aspects of a
person. The self is a term that—like soul, mind, spirit, and nature —refers to someone’s
essence, to what someone really is as opposed to what someone only appears to be.
Like self, the word true has several senses. A person can be true, as in faithful,
in contrast to being disloyal. Or true, as in honest, in contrast to being deceitful. Or true
as opposed to false; a thing can be actual and real, not imaginary, counterfeit, or only
apparent. As such, we can ask, one should be true to oneself as opposed to being what?
“Disloyal” to oneself? “Dishonest” to oneself? “False” to oneself?
There is also the pragmatic question: How does one go about being true to
oneself? And the ethical question: Should one be true to oneself? But I want to remain
with the semantic question that is both more basic and more difficult: What does “To
thine own self be true” mean?
To answer this question, we must consider the metaquestion posed earlier,
What is the meaning of “meaning”? What do we mean when we ask, What is the
meaning of “To thine own self be true”? Meaning usually relates to the significance or
sense of something and is often understood as intent. Thus, our question can be restated
as, What was Shakespeare’s intent when he wrote, “To thine own self be true”? What
was he trying to accomplish? What were his goals? What did he intend to communicate?
What did he want us to understand when we heard, “To thine own self be true”?
If we understand meaning as intent, then “To thine own self be true” means,
paradoxically, that “the self” does not exist. Or, more accurately, Shakespeare’s Hamlet
implies that “the self” exists only as a rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological
construct that we use to make sense of our experiences and actions in the world, not as
anything real. If this is so, then this passage may offer us a way of thinking about
Shakespeare as not just a playwright but also a moral philosopher, one who did his ethics
in drama.
.
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43
The Surface Reading / Closer Reading
This is a good structure when there’s a commonly accepted interpretation
that you’re going to oppose/complicate/develop or when you don’t have any
fancy methodology (it’s just a straightforward close reading).
Section 1: The Literature Review
– Orientation
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Section 2: The Closer Reading
– Question/Problem1
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
Notes:
– Here the Question/Problem2 is simply that previous critics haven’t
satisfactorily answered your Question/Problem1
– After the end of the introduction, create a section break, and start
the body of the essay.
Introductions
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Into the Essay
An introduction in the Surface Reading / Closer Reading model (with no literature
review).
From The Working Class in Hamlet
Claustrophobically cloistered inside the castle of Elsinore, quaintly angsty over
royal family problems, Shakespeare’s Hamlet feels like the literary epitome of
elitism. “Lawless resolutes” (1.2) is how the Wittenberg scholar Horatio describes the
soldiers who join Fortinbras’s army in exchange “for food” (1.2). Hand-of-the-king
Polonius tarnishes his son's reputation by spreading rumors that Laertes visits sex
workers (1.3). Hamlet derides himself as a “whore“ because he talks too much (2.1). The
Prince who never worked a day in his life denigrates Polonius as a “fishmonger” (2.2):
quite the insult for a royal advisor to be called a working man. The royals repeatedly use
“beggars” as metaphors for badness: not the most magnanimous gesture from rich
folks. Hamlet spurns both himself and Claudius as “slave[s]” (2.2): working people are
ready-made metaphors for insufficiency. And King Claudius complains of the simplicity
of "the distracted multitude, / Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes” (4.3). How
would this classism have played to the groundlings in Shakespeare’s earliest audiences?
How should it be understood in light of Shakespeare’s own working-class background?
What does Hamlet tell us about Shakespeare’s views on class?
Those who take the central theme of Hamlet to be the tension voiced in the “To
be or not to be” soliloquy—between “action” and “contemplation” (3.1)—are missing the
third term in Aristotle’s taxonomy of human behavior. He said there’s doing, knowing,
and making. We see knowing in Hamlet’s struggle to confirm the Ghost’s claim that
Claudius killed King Hamlet and doing in Hamlet’s efforts to act on that knowledge, but
the making in Hamlet is harder to find. The place of craft and creativity
in Hamlet becomes more evident when considered in light of the Rude Mechanicals in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, the technical trade workers who are also theater-makers.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’ denigrations of the working
class as readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with the rather valuable behavior
of working-class characters themselves. When allowed to represent themselves, the
working class in Hamlet are characterized as makers of things—of material goods and
services like ships, graves, and plays, but also of ethical and political virtues like security,
education, justice, and democracy.
.
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The New Phenomenon
Use this structure when the text(s) and/or topic you’re addressing is so new
that there hasn’t been any scholarly work on it yet.
Paragraph 1: Question/Problem Statement
– Orientation
– Textual Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraphs 2-?: The Literature Review
– Text
– Historical Evidence
– Historical Scholarship
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: The Thesis Statement
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
Notes:
– Your first paragraph should identify the text(s) you’re looking at and
the question(s)/problem(s) you’re addressing.
– Create a section break after the first paragraph.
– Since there hasn’t been any scholarship on your text(s), your literature
review should address the tradition your topic grows out of or is the
latest example of.
The New Phenomenon
207
– In your literature review, the presentation of Historical Evidence (the
tradition your text grows out of) and Historical Scholarship (scholars
interpreting that tradition) should be interwoven.
– Structure the literature review chronologically based on the Historical
Evidence, peppering in Historical Scholarship as relevant.
– It’s likely that this literature review will be longer than one paragraph,
since there’s so much content to cover. Treat it like a body section.
– Your Question/Problem2 should address how this new phenomenon
you’re addressing is different or may alter the conversations scholars
are having about this tradition.
– After the end of the introduction, create a section break, and start
the body of the essay.
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The Abstract
This is a good introduction for when you’re using lots of quantitative analysis
(data, statistics, charts, etc.), or when adopting a scientific rather than
humanistic voice.
Paragraph 1: Argument Statement
– Text
– Question/Problem1
– Critical Scholarship(s)
– Question/Problem2
– Method
– Thesis
Paragraph 2: The Roadmap
– Structure
– Stakes
Notes:
– For this introduction, write one sentence per Element, except…
▪ Maybe two sentences for the Thesis.
▪ Maybe two-to-four sentences for the Structure.
– In the Roadmap, provide a very brief overview of the sections in the
paper to come.
– After the Roadmap paragraph, create a section break and start the
body of the essay.
– Since there’s not a full literature review in the introduction, make
one of your body sections (early in the essay) a literature review.
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The Exemplar
This structure starts with a perfect, easy-to-understand example that
illustrates your argument and can be covered in one paragraph.
Paragraph 1: An Exemplar
– Orientation
– Textual Evidence
– Analysis
Paragraph 2: Thesis Statement
– Thesis
– Stakes
Paragraph 3: The Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship(s)
– Question/Problem2
Notes:
– In the opening paragraph, instead of developing a question/problem,
make a point.
– That point can then be extrapolated into your thesis.
– Include a section break after the Thesis Paragraph.
– Because you’ve already delivered your Thesis, your literature review
should state at the beginning how your argument advances the
scholarly conversation.
– After the Literature Review, create a section break and start the body
of the essay.
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210
– Because this introduction doesn’t identify the driving
Question/Problem of the essay, make the first paragraph of the body a
Question/Problem Paragraph: Orientation, Textual Evidence, Analysis,
Question/Problem1
Into the Essay
From Tragic Excess in Hamlet
“Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar,” the aging Polonius councils his son
Laertes in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1.3.60). Polonius proceeds with several
additional “precepts” (1.3.57) which similarly promote the Aristotelian ideal of the
golden mean, a cultural commonplace of the early-moden age which valorized the perfect
middle ground between two extremes:
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee....
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy. (1.3.64-70)
Polonius goes on (and on), but the principle is clear. Don’t be too hot, but don’t be too
cold. Don’t be too hard, but don’t be too soft. Don’t be too fast, but don’t be too slow. In
each of these formulations, there is no substantive ethical good other than moderation.
Virtue is thus fundamentally relational, determined by the extent to which one is able to
find the balance between two extremes which, as extremes, are definitionally unethical.
“It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean,” as Shakespeare wrote in
The Merchant of Venice (1.2.6-7).
More generally in Hamlet, Shakespeare paralleled the situations of Hamlet,
Laertes, and Fortinbras (the father of each is killed, and each then seeks revenge) to
promote the virtue of moderation: Hamlet moves too slowly, Laertes too swiftly – and
they both die at the end of the play – but Fortinbras represents a golden mean which
marries the slowness of Hamlet with the swiftness of Laertes. As argued in this essay,
Shakespeare endorsed the virtue of balance by allowing Fortinbras to be one of the very
few survivors of the play. In other words, excess is tragic in Hamlet.
. . .
The parallels between Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras have been recognized by
critics at least since A.C. Bradley noted that, among the secondary characters in Hamlet,
there are “two, Laertes and Fortinbras, who are evidently designed to throw the character
of the hero into relief. Even in the situations there is a curious parallelism,” Bradley
continued, “for Fortinbras, like Hamlet, is the son of a king, lately dead, and succeeded
by his brother; and Laertes, like Hamlet, has a father slain, and feels bound to avenge
him” (90). My reading of this “dramatic triad” is something of a corrective to O.B.
Hardison, Jr.’s treatment of Hamlet as a thinly veiled morality play, Hamlet an Everyman
The Exemplar
211
An introduction in the Exemplar model.
placed before three competing options, Ophelia standing for suicide, Laertes standing for
revenge, and Fortinbras standing for forbearance. That arrangement makes a certain bit of
sense, but it runs into several problems. First, while Hardison gave examples of
Shakespearean “dramatic triads” in the Hal-Falstaff-Henry IV relationship and the
Prospero-Caliban-Ariel relationship, the math doesn’t add up when we look at the four
characters involved in the Hamlet-Laertes-Fortinbras-Ophelia relationship. It’s not a
“triad” at all: there’s something else going on here. Second, whereas Hardison associated
Fortinbras with “inaction” (158), and thus with Prince Hamlet, Shakespeare presented
Fortinbras as a man of action both at the beginning and the end of the play. Third, Hamlet
is not a moral comedy (in the vein of the Tudor morality plays that ushered their
protagonists through adversity to a happy ending); the play is a tragedy in which the
protagonist dies. It is, at the very least, conceptually dissonant to have Hamlet and
Fortinbras both represent the space between action and inaction, and yet Hamlet dies
while Fortinbras lives.
Based on this ending, I want to put Fortinbras, not Hamlet, at the center of the
triad – not in the sense that Fortinbras is the main character who receives most of our
attention, but in the sense that Fortinbras is the virtuous character who does the right
thing. Thus, instead of asking, like Bradley, Hardison, and nearly every other critic who
writes about the parallel (excepting only Margaret de Grazia’s brilliant reading in Hamlet
without Hamlet), how Fortinbras and Laertes illuminate Hamlet, I want to ask how
Hamlet and Laertes illuminate Fortinbras.
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The Cannonball
This introduction doesn’t mess around. Your first sentence is your thesis
statement. Use this approach when you know that it’s going to take you
multiple paragraphs to cover your question/problem, literature review, and/or
method.
Paragraph 1: Thesis Statement
– Thesis
– Stakes
Section 2: Question/Problem Statement
– Orientation
– Textual Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Section 3: The Literature Review
– Text Statement
– Critical Scholarship(s)
– Question/Problem2
Section 4: The Method
– Method
– Theoretical Scholarship(s)
– Terms
Notes:
– Your first sentence is your thesis.
The Cannonball
213
– Create a section break after the first paragraph.
– Since you immediately stated your thesis, you’ve got more space to
develop the framing material in multiple paragraphs: your readers
will stick with you because they know where it’s all going.
– Note that Sections 2, 3, and 4 are sections not paragraphs. Each of
those sections is likely to be multiple paragraphs. Those paragraphs
may feel more like body paragraphs than introduction paragraphs.
– Because you’ve already delivered your thesis, your Question/Problem
section can state at the beginning how your argument resolves the
driving question/problem.
– Similarly, your Literature Review can state at the beginning how your
argument advances the scholarly conversation.
– In your essay, create a section break between each of these four
sections.
Into the Essay
An introduction in the Cannonball model (with no literature review).
From Tragic Excess in Hamlet
King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to
experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are
much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King
Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, so often seen as the birth of modern
psychology, might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern politics as well.
.
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The Stakes First
Sometimes you want to put what’s at stake at the start of the introduction
rather than the end. Use this approach when you want to emphasize the
implications of your argument, or when writing a presentist essay.
Paragraph 1: What’s at Stake
– Orientation to Stakes
– Evidence for Stakes
– Analysis for Stakes
– Question/Problem for Stakes
Paragraphs 2-?: Literature Review for the Stakes
– Critical Scholarship(s)
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: Thesis Statement
– Method / Text
– Thesis
Paragraph 4: Question/Problem
– Orientation
– Textual Evidence
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraph 5: Literature Review for the Text
– Critical Scholarship(s)
– Question/Problem2
The Stakes First
215
Notes:
– Start by laying out the question/problem that your thesis is the answer
to: not the question/problem in your text that needs interpretation, but
a bigger-picture question/problem. That’s what’s at stake in this essay.
– That topic just introduced in the first paragraph then receives a
literature review in the second: what previous scholarship has been
done on that big-picture topic?
– Note that this introduction will have two literature reviews—one for
the level of the stakes, and one for the level of the text.
– The key moment is the method / text sentence at the start of
Paragraph 3. This is where you explain that the question/problem for
the stakes can be resolved by turning to your text and argument.
– Then deliver your thesis.
– Create a section break after your thesis.
– Next, establish your question/problem1 (why your text needs
interpretation), since you haven’t yet done that.
– Now provide a Literature Review of previous scholarship related to
that question/problem1.
– Then create a section break and begin the body of the essay.
Into the Essay
An introduction in the Stakes First model (with no literature review).
From Tragic Excess in Hamlet
Did Ophelia go to the water, or did the water come to her? That is the question
asked in a scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet usually played for laughs – the clownish,
malapropistic gravediggers debating what is and is not suicide: “Here lies the water –
good. Here stands the man – good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is,
will he nill he, he goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he
drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own
life.” What’s at stake for the gravediggers is the legitimacy of Ophelia’s funeral. Since
Christian doctrine prohibited suicide, someone killing herself was not allowed a Christian
burial. What’s at stake for us in the audience is the understanding of a concept that is
central to the play Hamlet: moral agency. To what extent are we as individuals
responsible for the things we do, and to what extent does circumstance determine our
actions? Did Hamlet go to death, or did death come to Hamlet? Did Denmark go to its
downfall, or did downfall come to Denmark? Are catastrophes in tragedies the result of
the conscious choices of characters (a view in keeping with Aristotle’s notion of
hamartia), or do catastrophes come about “will he, nill he” with a turn of Fortune’s wheel
(a view of tragedy reminiscent of the medieval de casibus tradition)?
I think Shakespeare answered the question of Ophelia’s moral agency in an
unexpected way: through the imagery of music in Hamlet, including the songs she sings
just before her death.
.
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The Comparative Essay
Use this structure when using some shared feature of two texts to discuss
some larger similarity or difference in context.
Paragraph 1: The Situation
– Orientation to Text 1
– Orientation to Context 1
– Orientation to Context 2
– Orientation to Text 2
Paragraph 2: The Question
– Evidence from Text 1
– Evidence from Text 2
– Analysis
– Question/Problem1
Paragraph 3: The Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 4: Thesis Statement
– Method
– Terms
– Thesis
The Comparative Essay
217
Notes:
– Create a section break after the second paragraph, and another after
the thesis.
– A comparative essay usually gives equal weight to both texts.
– In the body of the essay, don’t jump back and forth between your
two texts in a single paragraph. Introducing new evidence and new
analysis from two different texts all at once is too disorienting for your
reader.
– Instead, cover your first text in full in a large section; then shift over
to cover your second text in full in its own large section. That second
large section can and should refer back to the analyses you did earlier.
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The Lens Essay
This is the structure for when you want to use one source (usually
philosophical or theoretical) to explain what’s going on in another text
(usually historical or artistic).
Paragraph 1: The Question
– Orientation Related to Target Text
– Evidence Related to Target Text
– Analysis Related to Target Text
– Question/Problem1 Related to Target Text
Paragraph 2: The Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: The Lens
– Method
– Theoretical Scholarship
– Terms
Paragraph 4: The Thesis
– Thesis
– Stakes
The Lens Essay
219
Notes:
– You can think of one of your main texts as the “target text”—the
thing being interpreted—and the other as a “helper text” that’s
allowing you to do your interpretation.
– In all likelihood, the two texts involved in the essay will not receive
equal weight. The target text will receive more attention, the helper
source less.
– Create a section break after the first paragraph, and another after the
thesis paragraph.
– If it will take you more than one paragraph to provide an overview
of your “helper text,” shift that material down to the start of the
body of the essay. Still give a sentence or two to your method in the
introduction, but then go straight into your thesis, saving the full
summary of your “helper text” for the body.
– In the body of the essay, as you unpack your “target text,” you can
and should return to specific ideas and quotations from your “helper
text” to enhance your analysis.
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The Test-a-Theory Essay
Take this approach when you want to use a new example or data set to
challenge an older, established theory—when you want to develop a new,
better theory.
Paragraph 1: The Prevailing Theory
– Orientation Related to the Theory
– Evidence Related to the Theory
– Analysis Related to the Theory
– Question/Problem Related to the Theory
Paragraph 2: The Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: The New Data Set
– Method
– Orientation to the Data Set
Paragraph 4: The New Theory
– Thesis
– Stakes
Notes:
– If you fully endorse the theory at hand, don’t write a Test-a-Theory
Essay; write a Lens Essay that uses that theory to unpack evidence.
The Test-a-Theory Essay
221
– A Test-a-Theory Essay is for when you want to challenge an idea
and develop a better one.
Into the Essay
An introduction in the Test-a-Theory model (with no literature review).
From Tragic Excess in Hamlet
This essay reads Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism in conversation with
William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Doing so reveals a new candidate for Hamlet’s
traditionally hard-to-define hamartia—his “tragic mistake”—while suggesting that
foundationalism is hamartia. So Badiou clarifies Hamlet, while Hamlet’s hamartia, and
the genre of tragedy invoked, helps further develop Badiou’s theory. Badiou addresses
the origin and operation of foundationalism—how and why we affirm one single belief as
an unshakeable truth grounding other questions like What is real? and What should I
do?—but Hamlet suggests an ethical turn. Foundationalism is perilous in the play,
prompting the concept of tragic foundation- alism: the decision to affirm one single idea
as the basis of all knowledge and experi- ence involves ignorance and confusion and can
lead to catastrophe.
My goal is not just to re-read a famous literary text, and not just to re-think a
promi- nent philosopher; it is to re-theorize a philosophical concept through a
Shakespearean intervention. Beyond the specifics of my argument about tragic
foundationalism, I hope to uphold a kind of criticism where literature is not merely the
recipient of philosophical ideas in the service of exegesis. Instead, the creative risks of
literature provide exemplars to be theorized outward to help us understand on-going
issues in life today. Beyond an occasion for the demonstration of existing theory,
literature is a source for the creation of new theory.
.
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The Historicist Essay
This is a good approach if contextualizing a text in the circumstances that
produced it will reveal a new understanding not available when simply
looking at that text in isolation.
Paragraph 1: The Question
– Orientation Related to Target Text
– Evidence Related to Target Text
– Analysis Related to Target Text
– Question/Problem1 Related to Target Text
Paragraph 2: The Literature Review
– Text
– Critical Scholarship
– Analysis
– Question/Problem2
Paragraph 3: The Context
– Method
– Orientation to Historical Text(s)
– Terms
Paragraph 4: The Answer
– Thesis
– Stakes
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Notes:
– Be sure to identify your “target text”—the thing being interpreted—
and the “helper text(s)” being used to enhance your interpretation.
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Bodies
The key Elements of Academic Writing associated with the body of an essay
are:
– Assertion: A claim that has not yet been substantiated with evidence.
The collection of an author’s assertions should logically produce his
or her argument.
– Evidence: The information—facts, examples, quotations, details,
experiments, data, statistics—presented in support of an assertion.
There are three kinds of evidence: textual, historical, and citational.
– Textual Evidence: Facts, examples, details, quotes, etc. drawn from
the text, often followed by analysis.
– Historical Evidence: Quotations and examples drawn from things
that occurred prior to or roughly contemporaneously with the
composition of the text. Like textual evidence, historical
evidence is often followed by analysis.
– Scholarly Evidence: The writers referred to by the author of an
interpretation in order to aid his or her argument. There are
three kinds of Scholarly Evidence: critical, historical, and
theoretical.
– Critical Scholarship: A reference to another writer who has
interpreted the same text as the author; such writers will
often be marshaled to support an analysis or argument or used
as a counter that the author responds to.
– Historical Scholarship: A reference to a writer who has
interpreted the historical evidence relevant to the
composition of a text. This group is often raised to
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225
demonstrate how a text is either paradigmatic or anomalous
for its time.
– Theoretical Scholarship: A reference to a writer whose
ideas (often abstract or philosophical) are relevant to the
interpretation of a text, even though that writer
doesn’t directly discuss this particular text or its historical
context.
– Analysis: The interpretation of evidence, whether it’s textual, historical,
or citational.
– Counter/Response: Alternate evidence, analysis, or argument (real or
imagined) that an author must account for.
Go Chronologically
Tell a story from start to finish. That’s the most important thing to remember
for the body of the essay.
There are exceptions—if, for example, you’re working with quantitative
statistics. But the key to structuring the body of an essay is to figure out what
story you’re trying to tell: what comes first, who did what, what are the key
moments in this story, how does one event lead to another, etc.
Allow your text(s) to do your organization for you. If you are making an
argument about history, allow the chronological sequence of events to
structure your presentation. If you are advancing some abstract theory, work
sequentially through your logic, from start to finish. If you are close reading
a work of literature, move sequentially through that text, unless there is some
significant benefit to a different organization.
The story you’re telling in the body of your essay should have a beginning,
middle, and end.
Don’t repeat yourself. If you said something in the introduction, don’t say it
again in the body of the essay. Repetition is a sign that you need to
restructure. (If you write something like, “As noted earlier…” that’s a sign
that you need to restructure.)
The structure of the body depends upon the structure you’ve chosen for your
introduction. Most especially, some introductions don’t include the driving
question/problem of the essay, so it’s important to put that at the start of the
body.
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Assertions
Body paragraphs are like rocket ships: they need to be launched with a blast
of fire.
An assertion is the thesis statement for a paragraph or section.
Every body paragraph should begin with an assertion.
Don’t write “topic sentences”; write assertions. A topic sentence identifies the
topic to be discussed in a paragraph, but readers don’t want to know the topic
under consideration: they want to know your claim about that topic. Don’t
just give a topic; give an assertion about that topic.
If each body paragraph has an assertion that can be thought of as the thesis
statement of that paragraph, each body paragraph also has a question/problem
that it’s responding to (i.e., a reason that it needs to exist), just as every paper
has a question/problem that it’s responding to. You can start a body paragraph
by asking a question/problem instead of making an assertion. If you do, just be
sure that the next sentence is an assertion that answers the question.
Posing a question/problem is often an effective way to transition from one
section of the body to another. At the end of the previous section, you
summarized your analyses up to that point; now, at the start of a new section,
you pose a question/problem that segues from that previous part of your
argument to the next part.
When writing a paragraph, you should know and be able to tell someone in
about five to ten words what the point of the paragraph is. Make sure that
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227
point is clearly expressed, usually in the first sentence of the paragraph (i.e.
the assertion).
Think of your argument as a pyramid: your argument rests upon your assertions,
your assertions rest upon your analyses, and your analyses rest upon your evidence.
Figure 6: The Pyramid of Argumentation
Assertions
228
The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Assertions
Section 1: Shakespeare’s play includes traces—only hints that must be imaginatively
fleshed out—of Polonius’s possible prehistories.
Paragraph 1.1: His name points to Poland, one of Denmark’s foreign enemies,
a quality highlighted by the change of the character’s name in the first quarto,
Corimbus.
Paragraph 1.1: Perhaps Polonius is an immigrant from Poland.
Paragraph 1.2: Or Polonius could be an agnomen, like “Coriolanus,”
an honorary name bestowed upon him for his military service.
Paragraph 1.3: The only clear bit of backstory that Shakespeare gives about
Polonius is that he was an actor at university.
Paragraph 1.4: When and how Polonius met his wife, Ophelia and Laertes’s
mother, is unclear, but she seems to have died.
Paragraph 1.5: Perhaps a grieving Polonius threw himself into his job, climbing
the ranks of King Hamlet’s council to become a leading advisor to Denmark’s
royal family.
Section 2: The hints of Polonius’s prehistory provides context for the scenes where we
actually meet the man.
Paragraph 2.1: I read Polonius’s verbosity as dad jokes.
Paragraph 2.2: Any father would struggle sending a son with a penchant for
youthful rebellion off to college in another country.
Paragraph 2.3: Frankly, as a father, I don’t know what I would do if I heard the
heir to the crown in my country had declared he was deeply in love with my
daughter: that’s a very challenging parenting situation, to say the least.
Paragraph 2.4: Let’s hope most fathers wouldn’t, like Polonius, put their job
ahead of the well-being of their daughter, although we sadly see that situation
all the time.
Paragraph 2.5: Ultimately, Polonius gives his life for his job: he comes out of
hiding to protect the queen, and becomes a victim of murder by and unhinged
aristocrat who then callously plays games with the dead body.
Paragraph 2.6: Polonius’s death breaks his children.
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Body Sections
A body paragraph should address one idea. If a paragraph addresses more
than one idea, it should be split into two paragraphs—effectively becoming
a section with two or maybe more paragraphs.
When organizing a section, start the first paragraph with the assertion that
states the point of that section, and then include a second sentence that offers
the assertion for the current paragraph. The second paragraph of that section
should begin with an assertion about the evidence analyzed in that paragraph
and—if necessary—a third paragraph with an assertion about the evidence
analyzed in that paragraph, and so on.
The operative unit of the body of a paper is the point, as in the point you’re
making, which operates on three different levels: the point of a sentence, the
point of a paragraph, and the point of a section. Each level—section,
paragraph, sentence—should have a single point. For each section,
paragraph, and sentence you write, ask yourself, “What’s the point?”
Body Paragraphs
Just as every paper has an introduction, body, and conclusion, every body
paragraph has an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction is
called an assertion, the body is called evidence, and the conclusion is called
analysis.
Every body paragraph is different, yet every body paragraph is the same. The
content of a body paragraph (the information that you present and discuss)
is infinite, yet the form of a body paragraph is fairly standard. That’s because
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230
every body paragraph works in roughly the same way: make an assertion, give
the evidence that supports that assertion, provide analysis of how that evidence
supports that assertion, and provide analysis of how that assertion supports your
argument.
In theory, therefore, the logic of a paragraph is as follows:
Assertion: Make a claim.
– Evidence: Present the evidence that supports your assertion.
– Analysis1: Explain how your evidence supports your assertion.
– Analysis2: Explain how your assertion plays a part in your
argument.
In practice, a paragraph will rarely, if ever, work this cleanly. If you wrote a
series of paragraphs each rigidly following the above structure, your paper
would feel very mechanical. Moreover, there are different kinds of evidence.
There is textual evidence, which consists of examples, facts, statistics, etc. There
is historical evidence, which offers context. And there is Scholarly Evidence, which
itself has three kinds: critical, historical, and theoretical.
In practice, therefore, a body paragraph is more likely to look something like
this (with each bullet point representing a sentence):
Assertion: Make a claim.
– Orientation: Provide framing/background for the evidence you’re
about to present.
– Evidence: Present the evidence that supports your assertion
(maybe quotation).
– Evidence: Present some more evidence (maybe summary).
– Analysis1: Explain how your evidence supports your assertion.
– Evidence: Present some more evidence (maybe quantitative).
– Analysis2: Explain how your assertion plays a part in your
argument.
Furthermore, there are some different strategies you can use to move from
evidence to analysis, such as asking questions and offering counters.
First, you can pose a question/problem about the evidence just provided and then
follow that it with analysis.
Second, you can provide a counter showing that you’ve considered the evidence
at hand in depth as you move toward your analysis (i.e., the best interpretation
in your view).
Third, it can be effective to use a question/problem or counter to shift from one
paragraph or section to the next.
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As paragraphs start to function as parts of sections, you will find that sections
of your paper start to look more complicated, as in the following example:
Assertion for Section 1
– Assertion for Paragraph 1.1
– Evidence
– Analysis1
– Assertion for Paragraph 1.2
– Evidence
– Analysis1
– Analysis2
Kinds of Body Sections
There are an infinite number of things you can do in the body of your paper
to support your argument. Three key maneuvers to consider are situation,
demonstration, and explanation.
Situation is the presentation and analysis of historical evidence (and, by
extension, Historical Scholarship): context, relevant social histories, and so
forth. Usually it is best to do this sort of situation near the beginning of the
body of your paper.
Demonstration is the presentation and analysis of textual evidence (and, by
extension, Critical Scholarship): examples, case studies, and the like. Usually
paragraphs of demonstration that come near the beginning of the body of a
paper will focus more on evidence than analysis, and those that come closer to
the end of the body will be more oriented toward deepening your analyses
than introducing new evidence.
Explanation is analysis, detailed discussion of the logic that informs your
argument (and, potentially, Theoretical Scholarship). Usually it is wise to locate
these passages of explanation at the very beginning or the very end of the
body of your paper.
Sometimes these maneuvers will require entire sections to address,
sometimes just paragraphs, and sometimes simply a sentence or two.
Moreover, passages of situation, demonstration, and explanation will not
always cleanly separate into sections or even paragraphs. In reality, these
kinds of passages are likely to be interwoven as needed by the specific topic
and argument at hand.
Toward the Paper
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232
To give you a sense of how the structure of a body section might look in its
final form, here’s an outline of a body section from an actual paper:
– Question/Problem for Section 2
– Assertion for Section 2
– Assertion for Paragraph 2.1
– Textual Evidence
– Textual Evidence
– Analysis1
– Counter
– Response
– Assertion for Paragraph 2.2
– Textual Evidence
– Question/Problem
– Analysis1
– Analysis2
– Question/Problem for Paragraph 2.3
– Assertion for Paragraph 2.3
– Theoretical Scholarship
– Textual Evidence
– Analysis1
– Textual Evidence
– Counter
– Response
– Analysis2
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Into the Essay
A body paragraph moving from orientation and assertion to evidence, analysis, counter,
and response.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning
of Modern Politics
Let’s read Hamlet as if we’ve never read it before. It begins with a king who
has died. A figure looking like the dead king has appeared to some soldiers sent to guard
the castle of Elsinore – they don’t know why, nor do we in the audience. This figure was
armored up, suggesting something of a warrior king, and this intimation of a warrior king
is immediately confirmed by a man named Horatio, the only one around who has any
idea what’s going on:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
‘Tis strange. (1.1.60-64)
There really is something “strange” about Horatio’s story. A technical term of combat,
“parle” means peaceful negotiations between the opposing sides of a conflict. In fact, the
Oxford English Dictionary cites this line from Hamlet for its definition: “A debate or
conference; discussion; negotiation; spec. a meeting between enemies or opposing parties
to discuss the terms of an armistice.” But the former king, if Horatio can be taken at his
word, once slaughtered a slew of Polacks while in parlay. This is not the only possible
reading of this line. Perhaps Horatio is trying to be metaphorical or glib – and there is
some editorial dispute over the phrase “sledded Polacks” – but the most straightforward
reading of the first substantive bit of information we get about King Hamlet is that he
was a warrior king who did not respect the laws of war.
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234
A body section with multiple paragraphs in it.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
When speaking about the crime that launches the play – the murder of King
Hamlet – both the Ghost of King Hamlet and Prince Hamlet exhibit unconscious,
unintentional bias against Gertrude. First, when the Ghost comments on Gertrude’s
remarriage to Claudius, she is initially acquitted of any wrongdoing. The Ghost clearly
blames and despises Claudius – characterizing the usurper as a perverse but powerful,
even magical seducer – but then, in a surprising twist, the Ghost also impugns the
integrity of Gertrude:
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts –
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce! – won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. (1.5.42-46)
If Claudius really is the powerful villain the Ghost describes, then why is Gertrude only
“seeming-virtuous”? The passage prepares us to imagine an evil yet irresistible Claudius
who deceives and captures a morally pure yet weak-willed Gertrude. When the Ghost
characterizes Gertrude as “seeming-virtuous,” however, it implies that she is actually not
virtuous (she only appears to be). In contrast to the Ghost’s earlier characterization of
Gertrude as merely weak, “seeming-virtuous” implies that, in acquiescing to Claudius’s
seduction, Gertrude actually does hold some moral agency for her actions – that she is at
fault. Although the Ghost seems to want to assign blame entirely to Claudius – that is
why the Ghost later tells Hamlet to leave Gertrude alone – his unconscious biases surface
in the way he unintentionally indicts Gertrude.
That may be simply because there is already a latent sexism at work in the
Ghost’s conception of “virtue,” a word coming from the Latin vir, “man.”1
The modern
sense of virtuous as “ethical” or “upstanding” was certainly in circulation in Elizabethan
England, but it had to compete with the classical, gendered sense. To be virtuous in
classical literature was to be “manly,” and perhaps Gertrude is only “seeming-virtuous”
because she is quite obviously not a man. Etymologically, the very idea of virtue is
inherently biased against women.
The pattern present in the Ghost’s initial comment on Gertrude’s remarriage –
an intimation of her innocence followed by the implication of her guilt – occurs again
when the Ghost tells Hamlet to focus on Claudius rather than Gertrude:
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. (1.4.84-88)
At first, the Ghost seems to be saying, Go after Claudius, not Gertrude, because he’s
guilty and she’s innocent. By the end of the passage, however, it becomes clear that the
Ghost does indeed see Gertrude as guilty, but her punishment should be dispensed by
God and her own guilty conscience. There is even a perverse sense of relish in the
Ghost’s desire to see a guilt-stricken Gertrude tormenting herself.
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235
In light of the Ghost’s contradictory claims about Gertrude’s moral
rectitude and responsibility, it is no surprise that, after the Ghost vanishes,
Prince Hamlet, even though he has explicitly been told to leave his mother
alone, expresses moral outrage toward her before saying a word about
Claudius: “O most pernicious woman! / O villain, villain, smiling, damned
villain!” (1.5.105-07). Although Claudius is guilty of murdering the King of
Denmark – a political crime of the highest order – Prince Hamlet focuses in
these two lines first on his righteous indignation toward Gertrude, who is at
most immoral in an ethical sense (as opposed to guilty in a legal sense) with
respect to her remarriage. Some would say this is not misogyny. It is not the
hatred of women. Kate Manne calls this “the naïve conception of misogyny,”
redefining the concept as a political and systematic (rather than personal)
phenomenon: “Misogyny is primarily a property of social systems or
environments as a whole, in which women will tend to face hostility of various
kinds because they are women in a man’s world (i.e., a patriarchy), who are
held to be failing to live up to patriarchal standards.”1
To Manne, Hamlet’s
misogyny stem from Gertrude failing to live up to his expectation that women
be his attentive, loving subordinates. Manne helps us see that Hamlet’s (or is it
Shakespeare’s?) initial focus on Gertrude rather than the more obvious
Claudius— seeing a woman who has committed a lesser offense as more
outrageous than a man whose offense is greater—is unconscious bias that
stems from structural inequality. Compare the way Hamlet earlier assigned
agency for the marriage he clearly despises to Gertrude, not Claudius. He
didn’t marry her: “she married” (1.2.156, emphasis mine). It wasn’t his king’s
or his uncle’s wedding; it was “my mother’s wedding” (1.2.178). When they
deliberately and explicitly address who is at fault, both King and Prince Hamlet
blame Claudius, but when their attention is focused elsewhere, their language
suggests unacknowledged resentment and hostility toward Gertrude. The Ghost
and Prince Hamlet exhibit what psychologists like Banaji and Greenwald call
“dissociation,” or “the occurrence, in one and the same mind, of mutually
inconsistent ideas that remain isolated from one another.”1
The most obvious example of this unconscious, unintentional bias
against Gertrude comes when Hamlet directly accuses her of killing her
husband. In her bedchamber, after Gertrude laments Hamlet’s accidental killing
of Polonius, Hamlet says it is “almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a king, and
marry with his brother” (3.4.28-29). Has Hamlet broken with reality when he
says these lines? Does he actually believe his mother had a hand in his father’s
murder? Is there some hidden backstory (as many adaptations have sought to
suggest)? Is Hamlet testing her to see if, Mousetrap-like, she proclaims her
malefactions when confronted? Or, as I think more likely to be the case, has
Hamlet’s distress and anger over his mother’s hasty remarriage been
transformed – in the panic of the murder of Polonius – into an accusation that
registers more symbolically than literally. When Hamlet says to Gertrude, You
killed my father, what he means is that her remarriage to his uncle has offended
Hamlet as much as if she had killed her husband herself.
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Conclusions
The key elements associated with the conclusion of an essay are:
– Counter/Response: Alternate evidence, analysis, or argument (real or
imagined) that an author must account for.
– Argument: The main idea in an interpretation; its central claim about
the text. The argument unpacks the thinking behind the thesis; it is
also the logical conclusion of all the assertions. Sometimes an author
will recap or summarize his or her argument (either the full argument
or the argument up to that point) in brief.
– Implications: Portable knowledge. The author’s statements of how his
or her argument is useful or helpful for concerns beyond the
narrowly defined text.
What follows is a framework for a four-paragraph conclusion. You may need
to add or subtract material based on what you did I your introduction.
Argument Paragraph
– Counter
– Response
– Argument
What’s at Stake Paragraph
– Method/Text for the Implications
– Orientation for the Implications
– Evidence for the Implications
– Analysis for the Implications
– Question/Problem for the Implications
Conclusions
237
Implications, Part I: The Idea Paragraph
– The Argument of the Implications
Implications, Part II: The Illustration Paragraph
– Evidence and Analysis supporting the Argument of the Implications
Notes:
– Consider transitioning from the end of the body into the start of the
conclusion by addressing the most compelling counter-argument to
your thesis.
– Responding to that counter sets you up to synthesize together the
totality of your main argument. Remember that an argument statement
is different from a thesis statement: The thesis is a short, accessible,
easy to understand, one or two sentence statement of your central
idea; the argument is a summary of all the thinking and evidence that
support your thesis, written out in a full paragraph.
– Transition from your argument to your implications by describing how
the ideas presented in your argument bring with them the power to
elucidate other things. That’s what you describe in the key sentence
on your method/text for the implications.
– Your text for the implications is the topic thing being interpreted in
your conclusion, which should be different from the text—the thing
being interpreted—in the overall essay.
– Your method for the implications is your description of how you’re
using your argument to interpret that new text for the implications.
– Note that, if you spent significant time in the introduction
developing what’s at stake, you don’t need to rehash that material in
the conclusion.
– After explaining how you’re going to use your argument to interpret
your text for the implications, write a short question/problem statement
for the implications. Provide a little orientation, a little evidence, a little
analysis, and then the question/problem that will be resolved by looking
through the lens of your argument.
– Next comes Part I of your implications—the Idea. This is where you
theorize your argument into abstract terms that are not bound to the
specifics of the text from which it came.
– Part II of your implications—the Illustration—returns to some
concrete examples to show your idea in action.
Conclusions
238
Into the Essay
A full conclusion.
From The Working Class in Hamlet
While the majority of Hamlet shows people acting without thinking or thinking
without acting, the scenes of working class people show folks with technical know-how
and the attention to detail getting things done—doing the work of maintaining a
successful society. That work stands in sharp contrast to the good-for-nothing social
elites in Hamlet whose actions directly and unambiguously lead to massive social
downfall. The working class is the seat of virtue in Hamlet. Being invited to see the story
from the perspective of the ultra-elite for most of the play short-circuits the everyday
ethics we bring to moral judgments about proper behavior. While the play's audiences
frequently find themselves searching for a sliver of virtue amidst the play's main
characters, almost all of us would prefer to have dinner with the shipbuilders,
playwrights, and gravediggers than with the royals and nobles. We only sympathize with
Hamlet because, in the context of Elsinore, he seems thoughtful and victimized. But
Hamlet's a disaster of a person. It’s hard to argue with the conclusion Shakespeare came
to when asking what to do with Elsinore: burn it down.
Hamlet’s embrace of the working class does not insulate the text from critique.
Even if the play is about all the awful things social elites do, it's still about social elites.
Working-class characters speak only X percent of the lines in the play. From
Dante’s Inferno and Pride and Prejudice to Citizen Kane and Game of Thrones, stories
sharply critical of upper-class excess still center the social elites they seek to
expose. Working-class characters may appear in the service of that take-down—often
they are the moral barometer against which upper class assholes are judged to be
insufficient—but that dynamic reifies the working class as an ancillary appendage of the
upper class. Here Hamlet is the progressive politician who espouses egalitarian
economics to his posh friends at a fancy gala. For-the-people statements, even when
sincere and honest-to-goodness, do not carry the weight of actual—fully present and
authentic—representation of working class people. As readers, we can choose to spend
our time with the texts that choose to spend their time with us.
Yet Hamlet's simple proposition often holds true in life today: virtue resides in
the makers of things, in contrast to those who think without doing anything (scholars)
and those who act without thinking (politicians). From factory workers to activists, the
makers of the world are the ones who manage the success of our societies. They are the
ones who serve with a smile, whistle while they work, and create the material conditions
in which society can thrive. The makers are the seat of virtue. They do not use their
social privilege to avoid responsibility for their actions, and their sense of responsibility
informs their commitment to concrete goals and practical steps to achieve them. While
social elites rot society through the twin corrosives of political corruption and scholarly
detachment, the working class keeps the machine running. They build the ships, plays,
and graves society needs to function, and monitor the nuts-and-bolts of the ideals—like
education and justice—that we aspire to uphold.
There’s a lot for working-class folks to hate about Hamlet—not just because
it’s old, dusty, difficult to understand, and filled with frills, tights, and those weird lace
neck thingies that are just socially awkward to think about. Peak Euro weirdness.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet feels like the epitome of elitism but, read closely and with feeling,
it provides a conceptual foundation for a more egalitarian society that recognizes the
virtue and prioritizes the value of the working class. It’s up to us to make that vision a
reality. Let’s get to work.
.
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57
Empirical Papers
In academic writing, one distinction to draw is between argumentative papers
and empirical papers. Argumentative papers tend to come from the
humanities, while empirical papers usually appear in the sciences. (The social
sciences display a mix of argumentative and empirical papers, and sometimes
include single papers that display both argumentative and empirical
elements.)
An argumentative paper takes a position on an issue and supports that
position with evidence and analysis. An empirical paper reports research
based on observations or experiments. In other words, an argumentative
paper is often about the proper interpretation of evidence (facts, data,
information) that is already known about, while an empirical paper is usually
about the collection of new evidence that then needs to be interpreted.
Thus, an empirical paper (1) poses a question that can only be answered by
gathering information not currently available to the researcher, (2) gathers
that information in some controlled way, and then (3) interprets that
information.
Cosmetically, one difference between argumentative and empirical papers is
the style in which each is written. Argumentative papers can come in MLA,
Chicago, or APA style. Empirical papers usually appear in APA style.
More substantially, perhaps the biggest difference between an argumentative
and an empirical paper comes in the organization of each. An argumentative
paper is usually structured according to introduction, body, and conclusion—
an introduction that states a thesis, a body that supports the thesis, and a
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conclusion that considers the implications of the thesis. In contrast, an
empirical paper is usually structured according to introduction, method,
results, and discussion.
In other words, empirical papers follow the so-called scientific method.
Observations are made; a hypothesis is developed based on those
observations; experiments are conducted to test the hypothesis; and those
experiments are interpreted to consider the truth of the hypothesis.
As such, an empirical paper is a record of the research process: research and
writing occur at the same time. You make an observation, and you write
down what that observation is. You generate a hypothesis, and you write
down what that hypothesis is. You conceive an experiment, and you write
down what that experiment is. You conduct that experiment, and you write
down what the results were. And you interpret those results, and you write
down what your interpretations are.
In contrast, when writing an argumentative paper, research and interpretation
all occur before the first word of the paper is written. An argumentative paper
is not about discovery, as an empirical paper is; an argumentative paper is
about persuasion.
The only thing that needs to occur before you start writing an empirical paper
is to make an observation of something that is peculiar or needs to be
explained. Once this observation has been made, you can start writing your
paper, beginning with your introduction.
Empirical papers may use quantitative analysis or qualitative analysis.
Quantitative research generates numerical data and seeks to establish causal
relationships between two or more variables. Qualitative research objectively
and critically analyzes behaviors, beliefs, feelings, or values with few or no
numerical data available for analysis.
Structuring Empirical Papers
Introduction: The goal of your introduction is to frame and justify your study.
Your introduction needs to explain why your study needs to exist. In order
to do so, include three sections:
Question or Problem: Describe the observation or situation that gave rise to
your interest in the subject you’re going to consider. Clearly state the
research question(s) that you want to ask in your study.
Literature Review: Having stated one or more research questions, next
describe the existing scholarly research relevant to your question(s)?
Have other researchers already asked your question(s)? Have others
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asked similar questions? Is there debate or consensus in the field
regarding your topic? Through citation, quotation, paraphrase, and
summary, review and analyze these previous scholarly interpretations,
narrating the various camps or perspectives that exist in this academic
conversation, identifying any classic or landmark scholars or works, and
explaining which interpretations are the least satisfactory and which are
the most illuminating. Then, justify the need for your paper to exist by
identifying any gaps in the scholarship, any unresolved issues regarding
your topic, and/or any issues that are wrongfully thought to be resolved.
Hypotheses: Based on your observations, your knowledge of the
scholarship, and your common sense, state what you expect the
answer(s) to your research question(s) to be. Also, note any specific
predictions that follow from your hypothesis.
Method: Your hypothesis is your “sense of things” based on your current
knowledge of the situation at hand, but you need to determine whether or
not your sense of things actually matches up with the facts of the matter.
That is, you need to determine whether or not your hypothesis is true.
Therefore, you need to conceive and conduct a data-gathering study that will
collect the information needed to determine confidently whether or not your
hypothesis is correct. The section on your method is where you describe the
study that you’ve conceived. The method section is a detailed breakdown of
your study, including your subjects, equipment, design, and procedure. Based
on your method section, your reader should be able to replicate your study—
that is, should be able to recreate your study in an attempt to confirm or
disconfirm your results.
Subjects: If your study involved human or animal participants, explain who
they are, how they came to be involved, any relevant information about
their identities, etc.
Equipment: Note any materials or tools you used to collect data.
Design: Explain the logic behind your study: how will your study generate
reliable results? This is also the place to explain, if necessary, what your
independent and dependent variables were. In a scientific study, an
independent variable is the variable that is changed to test the effects on
the dependent variable. The dependent variable “depends” upon the
independent variable. As the researcher changes the independent
variable, the change in the dependent variable is observed and recorded.
Procedure: Describe in sequence the steps you took to administer your
study.
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Results: If your section on method is where you describe how you’re going
about your research, your section on results is where you report the findings
of that research. At this point, you’re not yet interpreting your findings (that
comes next in the “discussion” section). Right now, you’re simply reporting
the findings that need to be interpreted: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Report the
information, statistics, data, etc. gathered from your study. Consider using
tables and figures: they often represent results more clearly and concisely than
text does. If you use tables and figures, however, be sure to direct your reader
to them in your text, and use your text to draw your reader’s attention to the
most significant findings.
Discussion: Your results are a what: they are what is true. But your discussion is
a why: it is the place to explain how the facts, data, information, etc. reported
in your results came to be. Why did what happened happen (or, why does
what happens happen)? Interpret your findings by considering your
hypotheses in the context of your results. Did your results support your
hypotheses? How do your results relate to your research question(s) in
general? Discuss possible explanations for your results, especially unexpected
results. Discuss the implications of your findings. Identify any follow-up
studies that might need to be conducted. Discuss limitations of the
experiment that could be remedied in future experiments. Avoid overstating
the importance of your findings. Be modest rather than expansive. Avoid
speculating beyond the data.
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Into the Essay
From Shakespeare’s Early Footprint
Elizabethan playwright; author of Hamlet; greatest tragedian of all time: these are some
of the ways we remember Shakespeare today, but how was he thought of in his own
time? What was Shakespeare’s most popular work in his own day? These questions
might be answered by counting the number of editions of his works, but that tally would
leave out performances. We could add recorded performances, but that tally would still
leave out critical commentary on Shakespeare’s works, which are obviously an important
index to their popularity. Fortunately, a new database has emerged: the Folger
Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare Documented website, “the largest and most
authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the life of William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), bringing together all known manuscript and print references to
Shakespeare, his works, and additional references to his family, in his lifetime and
shortly thereafter.”
I. Method
To gauge Shakespeare’s early modern “footprint” – which of his texts were most
popular? when was he most popular? – I gathered some data from Shakespeare
Documented. The database allows users to filter the results by work (the “Plays &
Poetry” tab) and by date (the “Decade” tab). By combining these filters, I was able to
track which works were popular at which times, as well as totals for each work and each
decade.
II. Results
Table 7: Shakespeare's Early Footprint
Text 1590s 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s Total
All’s Well That Ends 0 0 0 1 0 1
Antony and Cleopatra 0 1 1 1 0 3
As You Like It 0 2 0 1 0 3
The Comedy of Errors 2 2 0 1 0 5
Coriolanus 0 0 0 1 0 1
Cymbeline 0 0 1 1 0 2
Hamlet 2 12 1 2 1 18
1 Henry IV 4 8 1 3 0 16
2 Henry IV 0 5 0 2 0 7
Henry V 0 6 1 0 0 7
1 Henry VI 2 1 0 0 0 3
2 Henry VI 2 2 1 0 0 5
3 Henry VI 2 1 1 1 0 5
Henry VIII 0 0 3 1 0 4
Julius Caesar 0 1 1 1 1 4
King John 0 0 1 0 0 1
King Lear 0 3 1 0 0 4
Love’s Labor’s Lost 3 11 1 0 0 15
Lucrece 12 12 2 0 0 26
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244
Macbeth 0 0 1 2 0 3
Measure for Measure 0 1 0 1 0 2
The Merchant of Venice 1 6 2 0 0 9
The Merry Wives of
Windsor
0 4 1 0 0 5
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream
0 5 1 0 0 6
Much Ado About
Nothing
0 5 1 0 0 6
Othello 0 2 3 5 1 11
Pericles 0 8 3 1 0 12
The Phoenix and the
Turtle
0 1 1 0 0 2
Richard II 7 11 1 1 0 20
Richard III 6 9 1 2 0 18
Romeo and Juliet 4 9 0 3 0 16
Sonnets 3 4 2 0 0 9
The Taming of the
Shrew
1 2 0 0 0 3
The Tempest 0 0 2 1 1 4
Timon of Athens 0 0 0 1 0 1
Titus Andronicus 4 3 1 0 1 9
Troilus and Cressida 0 4 0 1 0 5
Twelfth Night 0 3 0 1 0 4
Two Gentlemen of
Verona
0 0 0 1 0 1
Two Noble Kinsmen 0 0 0 0 2 2
The Winter’s Tale 0 0 3 2 1 6
Venus and Adonis 18 14 3 1 1 37
Total 73 158 42 39 9 321
III. Discussion
This research suggests that, in his own day, Shakespeare was primarily known
as a poet and a writer of history plays. As Figure 1 shows, his most popular works were
his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. After his poetry, his most
popular works were his history plays: three of his top four plays were histories (Richard
II, Richard III, and 1 Henry IV).
Looking more closely at Shakespeare’s most popular plays confirms some
expectations but also reveals some surprises. First, as Figure 2 shows, it is somewhat
surprising that Hamlet was not Shakespeare’s most prominent play in the early-modern
era: that honor goes to Richard II, with Hamlet coming in second. More generally, the
top five plays (Richard II, Hamlet, Richard III, 1 Henry IV, and Romeo and Juliet) are
rather predictable, but Shakespeare’s sixth most-popular play, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and
his seventh, Pericles, are surprising because neither is particularly popular in the modern
era.
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245
Figure 8: Shakespeare's Early Footprint According to Items Catalogued in Shakespeare
Documented.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Venus and Adonis
Lucrece
Richard II
Hamlet
Richard III
1 Henry IV
Romeo and Juliet
Love’s Labor’s Lost
Pericles
Othello
The Merchant of Venice
Sonnets
Titus Andronicus
2 Henry IV
Henry V
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
The Winter’s Tale
The Comedy of Errors
2 Henry VI
3 Henry VI
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Troilus and Cressida
Henry VIII
Julius Caesar
King Lear
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
1 Henry VI
Macbeth
The Taming of the Shrew
Cymbeline
Measure for Measure
The Phoenix and the Turtle
Two Noble Kinsmen
All’s Well That Ends Well
Coriolanus
King John
Timon of Athens
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Shakespeare's Early Footprint
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246
Figure 9: Shakespeare's Most Popular Plays, 1590-1640, According to Items Catalogued
in Shakespeare Documented.
Looking more closely at Shakespeare’s active decades, we can re-affirm that
Shakespeare’s early artistic identity was centered upon his history plays: the top three
plays in the 1590s were histories, and six of the top eleven were histories, as Figure 3
shows.
Figure 10: Shakespeare's Most Popular Plays, 1590s, According to Items Catalogued in
Shakespeare Documented.
IV. Questions for Further Research
Shakespeare’s earliest artistic identity seems to be that of a poet and of a writer of history
plays, which leads to several questions:
1. Why were Shakespeare’s poems popular among his earliest audiences?
2. How and why did Shakespeare's history plays resonate with early-modern English
culture?
3. Why was Richard II Shakespeare's most popular play in the early-modern age?
0 5 10 15 20 25
Richard II
Hamlet
Richard III
1 Henry IV
Romeo and Juliet
Love’s Labor’s Lost
Pericles
Othello
The Merchant of Venice
Titus Andronicus
Shakespeare's Most Popular Plays, 1590-
1640
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Richard II
Richard III
1 Henry IV
Romeo and Juliet
Titus Andronicus
Love’s Labor’s Lost
The Comedy of Errors
Hamlet
1 Henry VI
2 Henry VI
3 Henry VI
Shakespeare's Most Popular Plays, 1590s
Seven
Language
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58
Academic Language
Write for others as you would have them write for you. It’s the golden rule
(of writing). Think about the sentences that you like to read, that you like to
quote, that you consider effective—then write sentences like that.
The final phase of the writing process involves writing out your ideas in
sentences that are easy for your reader to understand.
The actual writing out of sentences in paragraphs comes late in the writing
process because “writing” is really about the process of building an idea that’s
worth writing an essay about. Once you’ve got a good idea, writing a good
paper is easy.
Be quotable. Every sentence in every paper should be quotable. If you read
a sentence and say to yourself, No one would ever quote that, then you need to
revise it. Even in sentences that are doing routine work, such as introducing
a quotation, you should be adding enough of your own framing and voice
that it could be quoted by someone else.
Do you quote long passages of plot summary? Nope. Do you read every
word in a long block quotation? Nope. Do you quote clear and punchy
argumentative statements? Yep.
Writing captivating sentences is what turns a good idea into a great paper,
but remember that great sentences can’t save an undeveloped argument.
Have fun with your sentences. If you’re having fun in your writing, your
reader will be able to tell, and your enthusiasm will be infectious.
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249
When thinking about your language in your paper—your sentences—there
are two levels to consider.
The first is Being Correct, meaning that your sentences are free of language
errors. If a paper is filled with language errors, it immediately undercuts the
authority of the writer. No one will take your argument on tax policy seriously
if you don’t know how to use a comma.
The second level is Being Powerful, meaning that your sentences are clear,
gripping, and fun to read. The writing in a paper can Be Correct—can be free
of language errors—but still not Be Powerful. If Being Incorrect drains your
authority as a writer, Being Powerful boosts it.
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59
Editing
A revision of an essay should be shorter and tighter than the draft. Or maybe
they are the same length, but the writing in the revision is tighter, opening up
space to add more substance. You can do both macro-editing and microediting
for concision.
Proofreading is key. Forgetting to fix silly little errors, or failing to recognize
them, offends your reader disproportionately to the actual transgression.
Language errors torpedo your writerly authority because they lead your reader
to believe you either (1) don’t know what you’re doing or (2) don’t care
enough to get the details right. The more time your readers spend thinking
about your language, the less time they have to focus on your argument.
Spelling: Run a spell-check, sure, but don’t expect spell-check to catch
everything. Know the words you know how to spell and look up words you’re
not sure about.
Paragraphing: A paragraph break signals to your reader the end of one idea and
the beginning of another. Err on the side of too many paragraphs, rather than
too few.
Formatting: Papers should be typed double-spaced in 12-point Times New
Roman font. Your last name and the page number should be in the header
in the upper right-hand corner. Margins should be one inch; paragraphs are
to be indented one-half inch. Spaces should not be skipped between
paragraphs. Bibliography and/or notes should follow MLA or Chicago Style
unless otherwise directed.
Read out loud: One of the best things to do when editing a paper is to read it
out loud. Certain sentences will just sound goofy, and you’ll know that you
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251
need to revise them. If you’ve got a roommate or significant other, have them
read the paper to you while you note the moments that need editing.
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252
— Practicum —
Editing for Concision
Macro-editing: On the level of the paragraph:
 Reduce the number of quotations: summarize or just cite instead.
 Reduce the length of quotations: just include the key parts.
 Reduce the amount of analysis: cut the thinking-out-loud to get to the
take-away.
 Eliminate repetition: cut sentences that say the same thing in different
ways.
 Remove tangents and digressions: they may be interesting, but aren’t
needed.
 Remove ancillary ideas and information: interesting, not needed.
Micro-editing: On the level of the sentence:
 Make long, flowery sentences with lots of phrases and clauses
into simple snappy statements.
 Change word forms to reduce word count: It was a terrible tragedy.
It was tragic.
 Reduce nominalizations: The use of verbs should be done as an
indication of action. Use verbs to indicate action.
 Remove adverbs, adjectives, and qualifying phrases: Indeed, that is
precisely how Shakespeare’s Richard III works as a literary text.
 Cut meta-discourse: For example, Shakespeare…; Looking at
Shakespeare’s sources alongside his own texts, we can see how the simple
transmission of an author’s knowledge…
 Trim transitions: Something very similar happened in the case of Romeo
and Juliet.
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Grammar
Grammar is the set of standards that govern how we should combine and
order words, punctuation, phrases, and clauses to communicate with each
other in recognizable ways.
Subject-Verb Agreement: The subject and its verb must agree in number: both
must be singular (e.g., He/She/It agrees), or both must be plural (e.g., They
agree). Most often subject-verb disagreement emerges when modifying
information comes between the subject and the verb (e.g., Each of the characters
in Shakespeare’s plays are complex should be is complex). Read the sentence
without the modifying information, and the proper agreement will be clear
(e.g., Each … is complex).
Fragments: All sentences must have a subject and a verb. Fragments usually
appear when you think the verb from the previous sentence still governs the
current sentence (which it doesn’t, because of the period). Either supply the
missing component (usually a main verb) or subordinate the fragment as a
clause in another sentence.
Run-on Sentences: When two independent clauses are not connected by a
conjunction, you must place a semi-colon or a period between them. The
most frequent kind of run-on sentence is the comma splice, in which the
writer uses a comma where there should be a period (e.g. Spenser wrote The
Faerie Queene, he also wrote several shorter poems.).
Conjunctions: Pay attention to the logical relationship between your clauses,
sentences, and paragraphs; then use the correct conjunction to communicate
the course of your logic.
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254
Post-Positive Conjunctions: Some words cannot logically start a sentence because
they depend upon something prior. The words for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so
(remember the acronym “FANBOYS”), as well as “however” cannot start a
sentence. Place post-positives after a comma or an introductory phrase (e.g.,
Robert Herrick spent his life as a courtier. He is most remembered, however, as a poet.).
Pronoun Agreement: First, make sure pronouns agree in number with their
antecedents. Second, just as there is subject-verb agreement, there is also
pronoun-verb agreement. They must agree in number: both must be singular,
or both must be plural. Most indefinite pronouns (e.g. each, everybody, anyone,
nothing, something) take singular verbs (e.g. everybody is…), but some (e.g. both,
few, many, others) take plural (e.g., few are…).
Prepositions: Prepositions have a precise sense, usually determined by the verb
you choose (e.g., you center on not around something). A dictionary will tell
you the idiomatic preposition to attach to a word.
Split Infinitives: An adverb (e.g., boldly) usually shouldn’t interrupt an infinitive
(e.g., to go). Revise to boldly go where no man has gone before so it reads to go boldly
where no man has gone before.
Relative Pronouns: Who is the correct pronoun for persons or any word that
refers to people; that is used for things, objects, events, and non-persons (e.g.,
people that commit crimes should read people who commit crimes).
Who and Whom: Who is subjective, meaning it performs actions (e.g., it is people
who do things), but whom is objective, meaning it receives action (e.g., it is people
to whom things are done).
Don’t End Sentences with Prepositions: A sentence that ends regardless of the class an
individual belongs to. should read regardless of the class to which an individual belongs.
Dangling Modifiers: Put the modifying word or phrase next to the word or
phrase it’s modifying, lest you be the butt of Groucho Marx’s joke: “One
morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’
t know.”
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61
Punctuation
Punctuation is the set of non-alphabetical markings—including commas,
colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, quotation marks, and so
forth—that aid grammar.
Commas: Not as a rule, but often commas should come in the places you stop
to breathe when you read your prose aloud.
When the theatres were closed [pause], Shakespeare turned from
drama to verse.
More importantly, you must learn and follow the rules of comma usage,
which also means knowing when not to use commas.
Commas for Compound Sentences: Use a comma and a coordinating conjunction
to connect two independent clauses. Use commas for compound sentences,
but not for complex sentences.
Spenser was a poet of manners, but Milton was a poet of God.
Spenser and Milton were both great poets.
Commas for Introductory Phrases: Use a comma to set off introductory phrases
(usually prepositional, participial, or infinitive phrases), except when the
introductory phrase is three words or less.
Of all the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, the Monk is my favorite.
Punctuation
256
In the Tales Chaucer created a microcosm of English society.
Commas for Non-Restrictive Clauses: For a non-restrictive clause, one (like this
one) that clarifies meaning but can be dropped without disrupting the main
sense of the sentence, use a pair of commas on either side (e.g., it would be
possible to read, For a non-restrictive clause … use a pair of commas on either side).
The first comma indicates the beginning of the modification, and the second
indicates the end.
Shakespeare, who did not receive a rigorous university training,
surpassed all the “university wits.”
Commas for Lists: Use a comma to separate three or more items in a simple
series, including the last two items.
Ben Jonson was a poet, playwright, critic, and courtier.
No Commas: Never use only one comma between a subject and its verb. Don’t
put a comma between the two nouns in a compound subject, or between the
two verbs in a compound predicate, or between the two nouns in a
compound object. Do not use commas to set off a restrictive clause that is
essential for meaning (e.g., there is no comma in the current sentence after
clause because that is needed for the sentence to make sense is a dependent clause).
Usually there should not be a comma before the word “because.”
Semi-colons: Semi-colons should separate two independent clauses. Either side
of the semi-colon could be a complete sentence. Using a semicolon instead
of a period signals a close relationship between the two complete but
connected clauses. It is not correct to use a semicolon to separate an
independent and dependent clause.
Spenser’s career is modeled on Virgil’s; both moved from pastoral
to epic.
Semi-Colons for Lists within Lists: Use semi-colons to separate lists within lists.
Make sure all items in a series are of the same kind.
John Milton wrote works of poetry, like Lycidas, Paradise Lost, and
Paradise Regain’d; works of drama, like Comus and Samson Agonistes;
and works of prose, like Of Education, Eikonoklastes, and The Readie
and Easie Way.
Colons: Colons separate an independent clause from another clause that
illustrates, extends, or amplifies the independent clause. What comes before
the colon should always be a complete sentence; what comes after the colon
can be a fragment.
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257
The English canon is centered on four authors: Chaucer, Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton.
Dashes: A dash can be used as a hard comma, to subordinate a series of clauses
or a complete sentence. It is best to use dashes in pairs, the first dash marking
a break in the sentence—for digression, clarification, or amplification—the
second marking the resumption of the sentence.
Shakespeare’s plays—whether comedy, tragedy, history, or
romance—are all funny.
Hyphens: Hyphenate adjectival compounds. If the word “and” can be inserted
between the adjectives in a compound, do not hyphenate; use a comma to
separate them.
Marlowe’s atheism is a well-known aspect of his biography.
Marlowe’s atheism is well known.
Marlowe’s atheism is an old, cherished aspect of his biography.
Apostrophes for Possession: To form the possessive of a singular noun, add ‘s.
Hamlet sees his father’s ghost.
To form the possessive of a plural noun ending in s, add only an apostrophe.
Hamlet does not foresee his actions’ consequences.
To form the possessive of an irregular plural noun that does not end in s, add ‘s.
Polonius dominates his children’s lives.
To form the possessive of any singular proper noun (a name), add ‘s even if the
name ends in s.
Fortinbras’s army marches to Denmark.
To form the possessive of a plural proper noun (a name), add only an apostrophe.
Shakespeare bookends the play with the Hamlets’ deaths.
Don’t use apostrophes on possessive pronouns.
The English crown is greater than it’s its owner.
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258
Capitalization: Don’t capitalize willy-nilly just because a concept is important
(e.g., don’t capitalize words like truth or phrases like the modern age).
Italics: Italics and underlining mean the same thing, but most styles now prefer
italics.
Italics for Titles: Use Italics for titles.
Shakespeare wrote As You Like It before The Tempest.
Italics for Foreign Words: Use italics for foreign words.
Milton’s verse is revered for a certain je ne sais quoi.
Italics for Terminology: Use italics to signal the introduction of a new term
(which should then probably be defined). Once a term is defined, it is not
placed in italics anymore.
Spenser composed The Faerie Qveene with what I shall call a poetics of
imperfection.
Italics for Emphasis: It is now somewhat passé, but you can use italics to
indicate importance.
Perhaps we should recognize that there are no normals.
Reverse Italics: In titles, words that would usually be italicized should be
unitalicized.
See Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Modern Culture.
Quotes for Shorter Titles: Use quotes for a short poem, such as one not printed
in a separate volume (George Herbert’s poem “Mortification” is in his
collection The Temple); a short story (Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is
Hard to Find”); an article or essay (Stanley Fish’s essay “Interpreting the
Variorum” is in his book Is there a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities); a song title (Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” is on his album
Highway 61 Revisited); and an episode of a television or radio show (the episode
of The Simpsons titled “Bart the Daredevil”).
Scare Quotes: Use quotation marks to indicate that someone is using a term
inappropriately or that a term is up for debate.
Who exactly is included in “us normals,” to use Gofman’s term?
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259
Contractions: To maintain your academic tone, it is usually best to spell out
words instead of using contractions (did not for didn’t). There are times,
however, when contractions can be used effectively to make a common-sense
point that contrasts with your academic tone.
Acronyms and Abbreviations: All acronyms and abbreviations must be written
out the first time you discuss that organization or term, giving the acronym
or abbreviation afterward—e.g., General Strain Theory (GST). After that first
mention, the acronym or abbreviation may be used—e.g., a later sentence
could read, GST.
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Concision
One definition of “good writing” is: being able to communicate a lot of
information in as few words as possible. Never use seven words when five
words will do; never five when three will do; never three when one.
Another definition of “good writing” is: bringing clarity to complexity. This
idea is two-pronged. First, good writing does not address simple matters; it
addresses matters complex enough that they need explanation. Second, in
good writing, complexity does not manifest in confusion; it manifests in
clarity, which requires that a writer articulate specific concepts and put them
into well-defined relationships (e.g., sequence, cause-and-effect, identity,
similarity, contrast, opposition).
Make words, sentences, and paragraphs matter. Every paragraph and every
sentence should accomplish something. As you outline a paper, ask what
paragraphs need to exist for your argument to be successful. Once you know
why a paragraph needs to exist, ask what sentences need to exist for that
paragraph to be successful.
Try shortening the length of your paper by 20%, which will require you to
focus your argument and select your evidence more carefully. If you have a
400-word paragraph, try to get through it in 300 words without losing any
meaning.
Less is more: Write concisely, not wordily. Make every word count.
Write with concision, instead of with wordiness. Write concisely, not wordily.
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261
Clarity for complexity: Good writing is clear, not because it presents simple
ideas, but because it presents ideas in the simplest form the subject permits.
Say everything relevant in as few words as possible. Study each of your
sentences to see what can be deleted without a loss of meaning or emphasis.
Be sure to leave in the concrete and specific details and examples that support
your ideas.
In order to be good, writing must always be clear. It should not be simplistic, but
the writer should try to present complex ideas in a simple way. Good writing is
clear, not because it presents simple ideas, but because it presents ideas in the
simplest form the subject permits.
Be specific: Instead of vague generalities, use simpler, more specific language
to articulate your point. Be as precise as possible. No teacher has ever written
“Too Specific” on a paper; we write “Too General” or “Too Vague” all the
time.
Always write clearly. Use simple, specific language to make your
point.
Use verbs to indicate action: Don’t nominalize them, which means turning them
into nouns. Nominalizing adds boring words and takes excitement away from
your prose.
Verb use should indicate action. The use of verbs should be done as an indication
of action. Use verbs to indicate action.
Use plain language: Most of us need to write more like we talk. Avoid inflated
diction. The likelihood of misusing a word you don’t fully understand is much
greater than the likelihood of impressing your reader with your pretend
sophistication. Whenever you can, even among specialists, use plain English.
Avoid jargon.
The punctilious writer must abstain from aggrandized intonation. Avoid inflated
diction.
Eliminate redundancies: Take out intensifiers and modifiers that are unnecessary
because they are implied in the word they’re modifying.
It was a terrible tragedy. It was a tragedy.
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Clarity
Avoid Thought-Terminating Clichés: There are some topics that it should be illegal
to write about unless you have multiple advanced degrees. These topics
include “truth,” “reality,” and “human nature.” These words are “thoughtterminating
clichés”—they halt the deep and specific thinking that is the
particular province of academic writing.
Use the active voice: Write in the active voice, not the passive. Writing in the
active voice gives more information to your reader by stating who is doing
what to whom/what (subject, verb, and object). In the passive voice, the subject
receives the action of the verb (e.g., The ball was thrown). In the active voice,
the subject performs the action of the verb (e.g., Wilson threw the ball). The
active voice explains who (subject) is doing what (verb) to whom (object).
There are some telltale signs that you’re in the passive voice: (1) the noun
follows the verb, (2) the preposition “by” is used, and (3) a “to be” verb (e.g.,
is, am, are, was, were) is used as an auxiliary verb (e.g., The claim is being made by
Wilson that one should write in the active voice). Only use the passive voice when it
is logical to do so—e.g., when the agent of the action performed is unknown
or impossible to define.
Writing in the active voice should be done by everyone. You should write in the
active voice, not the passive.
Use the right verb tense: When analyzing a literary text, write in the present tense,
not the past. This tense fills your prose with immediacy. When making
historical comments, use the simple past tense. Avoid compound tenses.
Donne presented his speaker as a rogue. Donne makes his speaker a rogue.
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After Elizabeth had died in 1603, James took the crown. After Elizabeth died
in 1603, James took the crown.
Keep a consistent verb tense: If you need to shift tenses, start a new paragraph.
Make pronoun antecedents clear: Eliminate any ambiguity about the antecedent
of your pronouns.
When Hamlet stabs Laertes, he knows the sword is poisoned the
prince knows the sword is poisoned.
Modify demonstrative pronouns: Demonstrative pronouns—words like this, that,
these, those—rely upon an antecedent, but what exactly that antecedent is can
be ambiguous, especially if the antecedent is a complex idea in the previous
sentence or paragraph. Modify all demonstratives by finding one word to
summarize the antecedent
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system. If
you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that that system.
Use parallel structures: Clarity increases geometrically with the use of parallel
structures. Shape and sharpen the sense of similarity (or difference) between
ideas, actions, objects, attributes, and the like by using similar constructions
to describe them. Put parallel thoughts in parallel constructions. Use parallel
constructions to clarify relationships—to emphasize similarities or to define
differences. Using parallel structures is especially important when you’re
writing a long sentence.
Use parallel constructions to clarify relationships, whether one wants to emphasize
similarities or you are defining differences. Use parallel constructions to clarify
relationships—to emphasize similarities or to define differences.
Structure sentences based on the ideas behind them: Make the structure of your
sentence reflect the structure of your thought. Put your main idea in your
main clause, subordinating the less important elements in the sentence to the
more important.
Subordinate the less important elements in a sentence to the more important, so
that your main idea is in your main clause. Put your main idea in your main
clause, subordinating the less important elements in the sentence to the more
important.
Vary sentence length and construction: To alert your readers to important ideas,
put them in very short or very long sentences; the same is true for paragraphs.
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You should vary sentence length for rhythm. You should also vary sentence
construction for rhythm. You should alert your readers to important ideas by
putting them in very short or very long sentences. Vary sentence length and
construction for rhythm. To alert your readers to important ideas, put them in
very short or very long sentences.
Edit for flow: Use pronouns and transitions to link the ideas in successive
sentences together.
Wilson often saw fragmented language in the students’ papers. Wilson told the
class to use pronouns and transitions. Since he often saw fragmented language in
his students’ papers, Wilson told them to use pronouns and transitions.
Bury dull but necessary qualifiers in the middle of a sentence: Doing so keeps attention
on your main ideas.
Though they may be necessary at times, dull qualifiers should go in the middle of
a sentence. Bury dull but necessary qualifiers in the middle of a sentence.
Write to an unknown reader: Don’t write to your teacher, who might “know what
you mean” or understand a point you’re trying to make because it was
discussed in class. You can assume your reader has read the texts you’re
writing about, but don’t assume readers are privy to the analytical vocabulary
and methodology you’re using.
As mentioned in class, we should write to an unknown reader. Write to an
unknown reader.
Be Inclusive: Don’t use stereotypes, obviously, but also be aware that some
common phrases are secretly exclusive. Be sure to include everyone in your
pronouns.
A writer must be inclusive if he wants to address all mankind. A writer must
be inclusive if he or she wants to address all humankind.
The Royal We: Be careful with the royal “we.” It is usually a bad idea to assume
that you and your reader act in the same way and believe the same things.
We use the royal “we” when we probably shouldn’t. Beginning writers often use
the royal “we” when they shouldn’t.
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Style
Every paragraph you write should include at least one “memorable moment.”
Style makes ideas memorable.
Style includes what we often think of as “creative writing”—writing that is
imaginative, playful, purposeful, poetic, emotional, and (gasp!) fun.
It might an unexpected piece of evidence, a sentence that runs for 80 words,
one that runs for three, a commonsense question, a break in tone, a joke, a
list of six possible readings of one line, a confession, a plot twist, a neologism,
an analogy, a parenthetical, what have you. Fill your paper with creativity and
sentences that snap.
These memorable moments, however, are seasoning, not substance. Only
include them if they make your substantive argument more clear, more
emphatic, or more powerful. Use style in the service of analysis and argument.
That’s why it is best to consider style only near the end of the writing process.
Add in creative moments only after you have written a full essay. Ask
yourself, How can I make this sentence cooler? How can I make this paragraph more
memorable? Where are there opportunities for stylistic flourish? Doing so near the end
of the writing process will ensure that you’re using creativity in the service of
substance.
You may have heard that you should open a paper with a “hook” that grabs
your reader’s attention. Those hooks are almost always nauseating and
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obnoxious. You know what hooks an academic’s attention? Evidence and
analysis that leads up to a really compelling question/problem.
Put your creative moments—jokes, curveballs, anecdotes, metaphors, and so
forth— in the body of your paper, where no one sees them coming, not the
introduction or conclusion, where everyone expects them to be. Use creative
writing to wake up your reader in the middle of your discussion, while your
introduction and conclusion remain in an academic tone focused on your
argument and its implications.
Even more important than the effective use of creative writing is the
development of a writerly perspective—something that is a part of the
writing process all the way back in the selection of a topic. If you happen to
be a recovering alcoholic and former juvenile delinquent who has attempted
suicide, experiences bouts of depression, and is an atheist, you can and should
use those experiences to select the topics you write about and the arguments
you develop. And you can (but don’t need to) thematize your experiences,
identities, and relationship with your argument in your essay. Being
vulnerable is one way to earn the trust of your reader.
Some techniques of figurative language to consider are:
Anecdotes
Analogies
Jokes
Imagery
Statistics
Ventriloquism
Colloquialism
Rhetorical Questions
Enumerations
Personal Revelations
Sentence Length
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Into the Essay
An anecdote.
An analogy.
An analogy.
A joke.
From The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
Every semester, students in my Shakespeare class affirm an academic honor code, but I
feel a bit awkward when they do because, in stark contrast to life in our classroom, a
code of honor is problematic and in fact tragic in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning
of Modern Politics
It all began, Horatio explains, when Fortinbras of Norway challenged King Hamlet to a
duel. According to the conventions of heraldry, the winner of this duel would receive the
land under dispute (so here we are, effectively, in a Jerusalem being claimed by both
Israel and Palestine).
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
This Gertrude is an Elizabeth Taylor: extraordinarily powerful and talented, the woman
who has everything, including an addiction that creates a chasm between the public
image and the private struggle.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determinism
“Heaven will direct it,” Horatio says as his best friend follows a spirit into the dark
(1.5.91). Friends don’t let friends follow ghosts in the middle of the night.
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An joke.
A joke.
Imagery.
Statistics.
From The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
Love is a many-splendored thing. It is blind. It is patient and kind, does not envy or
boast, etc. Love conquers all. But, baby, sometimes love just ain’t enough. To quote
another 90s jam—what is love? (Hamlet, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more). Or
from the 80s—I want to know what love is; I want Hamlet to show me.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determinism
Claims for divine providence in Hamlet run into a problem with the pirates. Typical of
pirates: always causing problems.
From Macbeth and Criminology
This passage establishes the existence of at least one child for Lady Macbeth, and it
establishes her maternal femininity before pivoting from the intensely intimate bond
between mother and child formed during nursing to the gruesome, horrendous, and
chilling image of Lady Macbeth brutally beating a baby to death. The pinnacle of
domesticity is slaughtered on the cold altar of politics.
From The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
The word “love” appears 84 times in the Folger edition of Hamlet. By comparison,
“Father” only appears 73 times, “play” 60, “think” 55, “mother” 46, “mad” 44, “soul” 40,
“God” 39, ”death” 38, ”act” 35, “life” 34, “nothing” 28, “son” 26, “act” 23, “honor” 21,
“spirit” 19, “kill” 18, “revenge” 14, “doubt” 14, and “action” 12. Love isn’t the first
theme that comes to mind when we think about Hamlet, but is surprisingly prominent.
Hamlet is a play about love.
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Statistics.
Ventrioloquism.
Ventriloquism.
Ventriloquism.
From The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
As Figure 1 shows, there is a linearity between the severity of one’s hamartia and the
spectacularity of one’s death in Hamlet. Mathematically speaking, there is a strong linear
correlation coefficient. This constant, denoted as “r”, describes how perfectly two sets of
data can be modeled with a linear relationship. Completely random data would yield r=0.
The closer the value of r to 1, the better the linear model can describe the system. The
relationship between severity of hamartia and spectacularity of death in Hamlet yields an
r value of 0.9522, a very strong correlation.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
We can easily imagine Gertrude flinching at Claudius’s “unmanly grief” line. That’s a
rude thing to say, she might be thinking. What does manly and unmanly have to do with
anything? We are talking about grief, not gender. Keep your gendered conceptions of
morality to yourself, Claudius.
From Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of
Aeneas’s Tale to Dido
Hamlet asks specifically for “a passionate speech” (2.2.373) and, at some point in his
compositional process, Shakespeare must have said, I need some story for the players to
perform that shows an actor exhibiting passion toward an event in which he has no
personal investment.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
Imagine Ophelia hearing Hamlet—”To be or not to be—that is the question”—and what
she might be thinking: Never thought of that. Suicide. A new option. Ending it all.
Hamlet’s thinking about it, though Lord knows he’s got plenty going for him. Rich,
powerful, male. What about my sea of troubles? God, don’t even think about it. But it’s
too late. Can’t unthink suicide as a possibility. It burrows in your mind.
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Colloquialism.
A rhetorical question.
An enumeration.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
A pack of drunk assholes stumbles on stage—Danish royalty looking like American frat
boys. The alpha, King Claudius, just married, slurs through the affairs of state:
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. (1.2.125-29)
They’re going to get drunk and shoot off their guns. What could go wrong?
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determinism
“Even in that was heaven ordinant,” Hamlet replies (5.2.44). Which is more likely: that
God put King Hamlet’s ring (with its royal Danish seal) on Hamlet’s finger, as he
believes, or that that Hamlet himself chose to wear the ring to honor and commemorate
the dearly departed father with whom he has been obsessed?
From The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
Three kinds of love appear in Hamlet. First, there is what the ancient Greeks
called philia—friendship—in the service Prince Hamlet and his friends offer each other,
which they repeatedly call “love.” Hamlet’s first love, as it were, is Horatio, along with
Marcellus and Barnardo, but Hamlet also refers to his relationship with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern as “love.”
Second, we see romantic love—what the Greeks called eros—in the “hot love” of
Hamlet and Ophelia (yes, that’s an actual phrase from the play). Eros also appears in
Gertrude’s marriages—first to King Hamlet, then to Claudius—which are reflected upon in
the extended discourse on love between the Player King and Player Queen during the play-
within-the-play.
Third, we encounter familial love, which the Greeks called storge. “If thou didst
ever thy dear father love,” the Ghost tells Prince Hamlet, “Revenge his foul and most
unnatural murder.” This form of love also appears in the Fortinbras family and the Polonius
family. Hamlet even pits his eros for Ophelia against Laertes’s storge: “I loved Ophelia:
forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / Make up my sum.”
Similarly, Gertrude and Claudius’s eros challenges Gertrude and Prince Hamlet’s storge.
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A personal revelation.
A personal revelation.
Long sentences.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Hamlet
Hi, my name is Jeff, and I’m a Shakespeare scholar. The first step was admitting I had a
problem. I spend a lot of time making amends. I’m also a recovering alcoholic, which is
why I flinch at gimmicks like Shit-Faced Shakespeare, where actors see how far into
their benders they can remember their lines. Good fun, but Shakespeare thought alcohol
was a major social problem.
From Hamlet is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One
The power of suicide contagion, and my experience with it, is one reason I hesitate to
assign Hamlet, a play so obsessed with suicide that it’s hard to believe it’s one of the
most commonly assigned texts in American high schools.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determinism
In this reading, King Hamlet killed Old Fortinbras, which led to King Hamlet’s expanded
power, which led to Claudius’s expanded ambition, which led to the murder of King
Hamlet, which led to two separate series of events. First and most obviously, it led the
spirit of King Hamlet to purgatory, which led to the reappearance of that spirit in
Denmark, which led Prince Hamlet to search it out, which led the Ghost to task Hamlet
with revenge, which led Hamlet—after all the business with the feigned madness, the
royal surveillance, the existential waffling, and the Mousetrap—to kill Polonius thinking
it was Claudius, which then further split this thread of the plot into two sub-threads: first
the death of Polonius, combined with the break-up with Hamlet, led Ophelia to go mad,
which led her to commit suicide; second, the death of Polonius, combined with the loss
of Ophelia, led Laertes to vow revenge against Hamlet, which led Claudius to exploit
Laertes’s revenge and conceive of the rigged duel, which led to the deaths of Hamlet,
Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes. Meanwhile, in the second series of events caused by the
murder of King Hamlet, the ensuing destabilization of Denmark led the state to be seen
as vulnerable by its enemies, which led the latent Young Fortinbras to reawaken his quest
to reclaim his father’s land, which led to Claudius writing to Old Norway, which led to
Old Norway reeling in Young Fortinbras, which led to Young Fortinbras redirecting his
energies against Poland, which led his army across Denmark, which led Fortinbras to slip
into the power vacuum created in Denmark when King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, and
Prince Hamlet all die at once.
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Short sentences.
Parallel structures.
Parallel structures.
From The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet: Divine Providence and Social Determinism
Looked at in this way, fate is not a quaint historical relic from a less sophisticated time.
Fate is very much with us today. Fate is real. Fate is reality. It is the massive amount of
the material universe which exists independent of our attempts to make our way through
it.
From “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning
of Modern Politics
As such, we can think of King Hamlet’s tyranny as the villainy unique to pre-modern
politics, of King Claudius’s treason as the villainy unique to early-modern politics, and of
Prince Hamlet’s emotionally charged presentation of his situated and simplistic
viewpoint as if it were an unassailable truth as the villainy unique to modern politics.
From Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy in Hamlet
Horatio does not tell of Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet; he tells of “carnal, bloody,
and unnatural acts.” Horatio does not tell of Prince Hamlet’s unintended murder of
Polonius; he tells of “accidental judgments.” Horatio does not tell of Hamlet’s death
during his duel with Laertes; he tells of “deaths put on by cunning.” Horatio does not tell
of Ophelia’s descent into madness and suicide; he tells of death by “forced cause.”
Horatio does not tell of Claudius and Laertes’s deaths during their plot against Hamlet;
he tells of “purposes mistook / Fall’n on the inventors’ heads.”
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Contemporary allusions.
From Is Hamlet a Sexist Text?
Hamlet fails the Bechdal test. An invention of the modern pop culture critic and feminist
Allison Bechdal, the Bechdal test provides a three-pronged measure for gender inequality
in literature and film: for any given text, are there (1) at least two women who (2) talk to
each other (3) about something other than a man. The number of famous works,
especially films, which fail this test is astounding. The Star Wars and Lord of the Rings
trilogies both fail, which is surprising because, even though powerful women are present
in each – Princess Leah in Star Wars and Galandriel in Lord of the Rings – it becomes
clear upon closer inspection that these characters remain subordinate in the central plot.
Likewise, Shakespeare attended to neither the inner-life of Ophelia and Gertrude nor
their lived experiences in the world beyond their relationships to the men who are the
central concern of the text (whether fathers, husbands, or sons). The question isn’t
whether men or women are better, more ethical beings in Hamlet, but which are more
developed as characters. In other words, Shakespeare’s sexism manifested in a
specifically literary way.
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Titles
Here are some titles from a round of student papers:
– The Insanity Defense
– What Should the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Be?
– Please, Somebody Just Kill Me
Here are some titles from some recent volumes of the journal Criminology:
– Foot Patrol in Violent Crime Hot Spots: The Longitudinal Impact
of Deterrence and Posttreatment Effects of Displacement
– Policing Race: The Racial Stratification of Searches in Police Traffic
Stops
– Transferred Juveniles in the Era of Sentencing Guidelines:
Examining Judicial Departures for Juvenile Offenders in Adult
Criminal Court
You can easily see the differences: student titles tend toward imprecision,
uncertainty, and cuteness, whereas academic titles are specific, definite, and
sincere.
Sometimes students completely forget to title a paper, or they make the title
of a paper the title of the assignment (e.g. “Ten-Page Research Paper”), which
is a terrible title for a paper, unless of course your instructor has specifically
asked for it. Part of academic writing includes learning how to title your
papers in professional ways.
Your title should be the best and last thing you write for your paper.
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It is the first thing in your paper that your reader sees—and, in writing, first
impressions are important—so your title should be the best piece of writing
in your paper. Put your best foot forward.
Because it should reflect your most fully developed understanding of the
argument presented in your paper, your title should be the last thing you
write. It’s the first thing your reader sees but the last thing you write.
Avoid asking questions in titles. They make your reader suspect that you
haven’t done enough reading, thinking, or researching to provide a clear
argument about the material. If you haven’t given any time to your paper,
why should your reader?
Don’t try to be clever, cute, or funny in a title for an academic paper. Doing
so makes you look like an amateur. Also, when you’re writing an academic
paper, you’re not writing a personal essay or the great American novel.
“Shopping with Shakespeare,” “Lost in L.A.,” or “Under the Gun” are not
viable academic titles.
When you’re a famous writer and people will read your work simply because
you wrote it, then you can title it whatever you like. Until then, your titles
must give your readers a reason to read you papers, a reason to care about
them. Given that anyone who reads an academic paper reads it for one reason
and one reason only—to learn something—your titles need to advertise in
specific terms the knowledge contained in the paper.
In order to advertise the knowledge contained in a paper, a title should
include three elements: text(s), topic(s), and argument. A bad title will only
identify one of these elements; it might only name the topic(s) or concept(s)
under consideration without any specific details: e.g., “Too Much Delay.” A
reader has no idea what’s going to happen in the paper that follows this title.
It might be about how congressional procedures prohibit legislation, or it
might be about the crisis in leadership under former Majority Leader Tom
Delay. A better title would name the topic(s) as well as the text(s) involved,
which is to say the specific documents or pieces of information in which the
topic(s) appear(s)—e.g., “Delay in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Here, at least a
reader knows what the paper’s going to be about. But the best title will
identify the topic(s) and the text(s) under consideration and at least gesture
toward the paper’s argument about the topic(s) and the text(s)—e.g., “Delay
as Due Process in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” With this title, a reader knows what
the paper is about and even a little bit about what the argument is going to
be.
Topic(s), text(s), and argument is a lot of information, so consider using a
colon in your title to break it up—e.g., “Criminal Justice in Shakespeare’s
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Hamlet: Delay as Due Process.” Sometimes you will need a colon just to get
through these three elements.
Sometimes you can begin your title with a quote or a catchphrase, then use a
colon, and then identify your topic(s), text(s), and argument after the colon—
e.g. “‘He is justly served’: Delay as Due Process in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” It
is far more important to be descriptive about your topic(s), text(s), and
argument than to include a quote or catchphrase.
8-12 words is usually a good range to aim for in titles: doing so gives you
enough space to represent the specificity and complexity of your paper
without being self-indulgent.
MLA Style neither encourages nor discourages the use of headings
throughout a paper. Avoid headings if your paper is less than 8 pages.
APA Style uses more headings than other styles tend to use. In APA style,
the entire paper can be divided up into sections using primary headings. A
section with a primary heading can in turn be divided up into subsections
using secondary headings. And a subsection with a secondary heading can be
divided up by tertiary headings, which sometimes cover only one or two
paragraphs. Each of these levels of headings is formatted differently, so be
sure to review APA style when using headings.
In APA-style qualitative papers, your headings should be specific to the
content that follows. That is, do not use headings such as Method, Results,
and Discussion unless you’ve actually conceived and conducted a study in
which you’ve personally collected data through a rigorously controlled
experiment.
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Abstracts
From the Latin ab, “away,” + trahere, “to draw,” an abstract is a short
statement drawn out of a longer paper. An abstract is a brief summary of
your paper written to allow others to determine if your paper contains
information of sufficient interest for them to read.
Because an abstract is not a part of the paper proper, it’s fine to copy-andpaste
material from your paper into your abstract.
What follows suggests a structure for a 300-word abstract that provides the
following information: Text, Critical Scholarship, Problem, Methodology, Argument,
Evidence, and Implications. Plan to spend one sentence, and one sentence only,
on each kind of information, except your Evidence, which might require two
or even three sentences.
Note that not all abstracts are 300 words. Depending on the purpose or
publication, they can range from 50 words to 500. If your abstract needs to
be shorter than 200 words, the key categories of information to convey are
your Text, Problem, and Thesis.
– Text: Write a single sentence that describes your text—what you’re
interpreting in your paper. Identify both the specific and
the gneral aspects of your text—the documents, passages, people,
events, ideas, etc. that you’re interpreting as well as the topic, issue,
problem, theme, etc.
– Critical Scholarship: In a single sentence, review your critical
community—i.e., the previous scholars who have addressed the same
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text you’re addressing. You should aim to establish the dominant
perspectives or “camps” in the criticism on your topic, potentially
identifying which perspectives you plan to dispute and which you
plan to develop.
– Problem: Write a sentence that describes your problem– i.e., why your
text needs interpretation. You might state your problem by stating
why the published criticism on your issue (i.e. your Critical
Scholarship) is not completely satisfactory, and how your paper will
fill a gap, correct a misconception, extend a line of thought, address
new evidence, etc.
– Methodology: Pause for a moment to be explicit about
your methodology—i.e., the way in which you’re going about your
interpretation of your text. On the heels of your problem statement,
your method statement may imply or explicitly suggest that the
critical community is not completely satisfactory because it has not
had the best methodology.
– Thesis: Once you’ve given a text statement, a problem statement, and
a method statement, give your thesis statement—i.e. your
interpretation of your text. Remember that your thesis must be
responsive to your text; you must actually be interpreting what you
said you were going to interpret. Your thesis should also be
responsive to your problem; how does your thesis resolve or explain
the issue or question that you identified in your text and the criticism
on it? Finally, your thesis should be responsive to your methodology;
it should be the interpretation of your text that emerges when that
text is looked at in the unique way in which you’re looking at it.
– Evidence: In two or three sentences, provide an overview of the body
of your paper, specifying what evidence and examples you use in the
paper. Be as specific as possible.
– Implications: The final thing an abstract must do is to indicate why any
of this matters. Explain the intellectual pay-off of your paper, but be
aware of certain traps. Don’t act as though you’ve saved the world,
and don’t try to make your reader a better person. Instead, explain
how your interpretation produces transformative knowledge for a
specific academic audience who has specific academic goals (usually
a full and complete understanding of the subject upon which its
discipline rests).
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Into the Essay
An abstract.
An abstract.
From “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
This essay hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To
be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With this line, Hamlet poses his
personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question
of existence and nothingness. However, “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It
seems to be a representation of tragic angst, yet a consideration of the context of the
speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually a satire of philosophy and
Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. In this essay, a close
reading of the context and meaning of this passage leads into an attempt to formulate a
Shakespearean image of philosophy.
From Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Claudius likes to party—a bit too much. He frequently binge drinks, is arguably an alcoholic,
but not an aberration. Hamlet says Denmark is internationally known for heavy drinking.
That’s what Shakespeare would have heard in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth,
English writers feared Denmark had taught their nation its drinking habits. Synthesizing
criticism on alcoholism as an individual problem in Shakespeare’s texts and times with
scholarship on national drinking habits in the early-modern age, this essay asks what the
tragedy of alcoholism looks like when located not on the level of the individual, but on the
level of a culture, as Shakespeare depicted in Hamlet. One window into these early-modern
cultures of drunkenness is sociological studies of American college fraternities, especially
the social-learning theories that explain how one person—one culture—teaches another its
habits. For Claudius’s alcoholism is both culturally learned and culturally significant. And,
as in fraternities, alcoholism in Hamlet is bound up with wealth, privilege, toxic masculinity,
and tragedy. Thus, alcohol imagistically reappears in the vial of “cursed hebona,” Ophelia’s
liquid death, and the poisoned cup in the final scene—moments that stand out in recent
performances and adaptations with alcoholic Claudiuses and Gertrudes.
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An abstract.
From Why Shakespeare? Irony and Liberalism in Canonization
When scholars consider Shakespeare’s rise and lasting popularity in modern culture, they
usually tell us how he assumed his position at the head of the canon but not why. This
essay contends that Shakespeare’s elevation in the early nineteenth century resulted from
the confluence of his strategy as an author and the political commitments of his
canonizers. Specifically, Shakespeare’s ironic mode made his drama uniquely appealing
to the political liberals at the forefront of English culture. In their own ways, Shakespeare
and his proponents were antiauthoritarian: the literary antiauthoritarianism in his drama
(the irony granting audiences the freedom of interpretation) perfectly matched the
political antiauthoritarianism (liberalism) advocated by the likes of Adam Smith and John
Stuart Mill. Thus it is possible to speak of bardolatry as an allegorical intertext for liberal
politics.
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Revision
Here is probably the most important advice you will ever hear about writing:
Revision is not about going back to fix a paper. It’s about developing an idea
that was first formulated in a draft, and then writing a new paper for the new
and improved idea.
There’s a difference between editing and revising. An edit fixes the language and
grammar errors in a paper. A revision is a much more serious affair. To
revise—from the Latin re, “again” + videre, “to see”—is to see again, to reenvision
the core ideas of a paper. Revision is a re-thinking of both the
reading that went into an interpretation and the writing that went into a
paper.
Because revision is about starting anew, start over on your paper with a blank
page in your word processing program. Don’t go back to the original
document and try to adjust it. Instead, create an entirely new document and
start from scratch, even if, at times, you’re merely retyping from your
previous draft. What you’ll find is that you’ll revise and improve both ideas
and language as you re-enter them.
Perhaps the most crucial strategy for revision—it’s really a mindset—is not
to be tied to what’s written in a paper just because you wrote it.
One thing that often happens in my revision process is that I’ll find myself
saying, “I can’t get rid of that sentence,” and, “I definitely need that
paragraph.” If I leave the paper, however, and come back to it a month later,
when I’m not as deeply invested in every word that I’ve written, I’ll find
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myself looking at the same paper and saying, “I can get rid of that sentence,”
and, “I really don’t need that paragraph.”
Revision is often about making a paper better by making it shorter. If you
can express in eight pages what it previously took you ten pages to express,
then you’ve written a better paper.
When you receive comments back from readers, break them down into each
individual suggestion. Make a list of these suggestions, and then write what
you would do if you were to revise the paper on the basis of each suggestion.
You won’t always choose to include every revision, but it helps create options
to choose between.
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— Practicum —
Reflecting on a Paper
When you finish a paper, it’s helpful to make some notes about it—
reflecting on what’s working, what’s not, and future directions.
Reflections on drafts should describe your reading, thinking, and writing
process and respond to some or all of the following questions:
– What is your problem—i.e., what analytical question are you trying to
answer? (State it in a new way here—don’t just quote your draft.)
What makes your argument one that needs to be made?
– How did you come to your question/problem?
– What do you see as your thesis or main idea so far? (Again, don’t just
quote your draft.) If you had to write your thesis in 10 words, what
would it be?
– How has your argument evolved throughout your response papers
and draft writing?
– What kind of essay are you writing? What’s the logic of how your
evidence fits together to create an argument?
– What’s at stake in your argument? How might it be transformative or
revelatory for a standard or surface reading of your text?
– How does your essay relate to life today (if it does—not all essays
need to or will)? If your argument has some current resonance, how
do you indicate that in the essay?
– What point or idea do you feel you’ve conveyed most successfully in
the draft?
– What are your lingering questions about the text and your argument?
– What are the biggest problems you’re having at this point in the
writing process? Which ideas or points are you still struggling to
communicate?
– Are there ideas you haven’t said as well as you’d like to in the draft, or
that you haven’t yet managed to include at all?
– How have you brought your experiences and perspective—your
unique voice as a writer—to bear in this essay (either in the
development of ideas or the presentation of the argument)?
– What intellectual risks have you taken in this piece?
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Reflections on revisions should describe your reading, thinking, and
writing process and respond to some or all of the following questions:
– What is your thesis? How has it changed from draft to revision?
– What are you happiest with in this revision?
– What was most challenging with this revision? How did you
approach those challenges?
– What revision techniques did you use?
– What was new about the writing process for you this time
around?
– What would you continue to work on in further revision?
In writing your cover letters for both drafts and revisions, avoid cuttingand-pasting
from your draft. At the same time, my experience with
reading cover letters leads me to say that students often state their ideas
(problem, thesis, stakes, etc.) more clearly and more straightforwardly in
their cover letters, where they’ve taken a step back from the paper
(whether draft or revision) and formulated their sentences having fully
worked through a paper. Please consider going back to your paper to
revise it after writing your cover letter.
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The Writing ProcessHayat
Writer’s Letter
Dear Wilson,
First, I’d like to make clear that the question I’m really trying to answer is: Who is
Horatio? A basic reading of Hamlet tells us that Horatio is Hamlet’s friend who stands
by him even when he has no others. But a close reading reveals that he may not actually
be the best friend Hamlet needs. Furthermore, Horatio is a storyteller and a bit of a
gossip; holding the role of a bard, he may serve Shakespeare’s purpose as a vehicle for
self-reflection. This is what is at stake exploring the character of Horatio is actually an
exploration of Shakespeare, a person whose writing and life we have studied for
centuries. Perhaps his character reveals more about Shakespeare than we have realized in
the past.
When I wrote this paper, I tried to order my ideas in a clear, logical way, and I would
really like to know if the arguments that I put forward flow from one to the next in a way
that makes sense to you. I think my strongest argument comes in paragraph 4; in my
opinion, the short quotes that I chose to use there fit my analysis especially well, helping
me get my point across.
Something I’m wondering about is whether I should find more quoted evidence to
support my claims. I would really like feedback on that subject. Also, do you think that
the text I chose to interpret (Horatio’s words and actions from throughout the entire play)
is narrow enough? I realize that changing the text would require an entire reworking of
my paper, but I would like to know if you think that the subject I’m taking on, that is,
Horatio’s entire character, is too wide for a five-page paper.
Finally, what do you think of the title? Do you think that “Exploring Horatio” is too
raunchy or provocative? It wasn’t exactly my intention to give my title such an aspect,
but I think that it sounds good and accurately foreshadows what the paper aims to do.
Thank you for reading my letter, and I look forward to hearing your comments on my
paper.
Sincerely,
Hayat
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— Practicum —
Reverse Outlining
This guided session will help you develop an idea discovered in a draft
and work it into an effective structure for a revised paper. As such, this
activity will prepare you to create a detailed outline for your revision.
1. Take five minutes and write out your argument, as it currently stands,
off the top of your head.
2. Who is the audience for your essay? Who needs to know the
knowledge that you have? Identify the discipline, field, topic, area of
inquiry, line of thought, etc. to which your argument has a
contribution to make. (This is related to your stakes.)
3. In a short paragraph, summarize the actual substance of your
contribution—your implications.
4. Create a diagram of the kinds of evidence at work in your argument.
– Based on the interpretation articulated in your argument
statement, identify what your text is—i.e., what it is that you’re
interpreting in this paper.
– Based on your text, identify your major categories of textual
evidence—i.e., the bits and pieces of your text that you draw out
for in-depth analysis.
– Identify any major categories of historical evidence—i.e., the
material that is not, strictly speaking, within your text but still
holds some significance for your argument about the meaning of
that text.
– Identify any major categories of Historical Scholarship—i.e., the
scholarship to which you refer for your understanding of your
historical evidence.
– Identify any major categories of Theoretical Scholarship—i.e.,
philosophies, theories, lenses, etc. through which you look to
interpret your text.
– Identify any major categories of Critical Scholarship—i.e., other
scholars who have interpreted the same text or textual evidence
that you’re interpreting.
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— Practicum —
5. Based on your diagram, write a text / method statement describing
what you’re interpreting and how.
6. Identify your key terms. (Less is more: one or two key concepts.)
7. Using these key terms, write a thesis statement—a clear and
concise claim about your text that uses big concepts to make a
claim that is true, consequential, quotable, and not obvious.
8. Based on your thesis, work backwards to write a question/problem
statement—a description of the issue that your thesis resolves.
9. Note down any orientation that your reader needs to know to
understand and appreciate your question/ problem.
10. Now cut out your various responses to these questions—these
are many of the elements of your argument—and start to think
about the important element of structure.
The order in which you came to an idea and the order in
which you answered these questions is probably not the most
effective way to order your presentation of these ideas in a
paper. With each of your elements on its own fragment of
paper, start positioning them for an effective presentation of
your argument. Figure out how to structure the framing
material in the introduction; figure out the best order in
which to work through all of your different kinds of evidence
in the body of your paper; and ask how it’s best to deal with
“the bigger picture” in your conclusion. Create a linear
progression of ideas.
11. Once your fragments of information are structured in an effective
way, write out assertions for each section of the body and each
paragraph within each section.
12. Your work in this activity will culminate in a detailed outline for
your revision. A detailed outline presents all of the major
elements of your argument, in complete sentences, with each
element tagged so that it is clear how that information is
operating in your argument. When I do a detailed outline, I
include the totality of my introduction and conclusion, word for
word, so that the only difference between outline and paper is
that the information in the outline is tagged and it’s in outline
(not paragraph) form.
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Comments
The goal is to make the paper better.
Every paper ever written in the history of the world can be made better.
There has never been a paper that can’t be made better. The most celebrated
writings all could have been better. Good writers know that their pieces can
always be better. (Be cautious of writers who think their words can’t be made
better.)
Comments on papers are rarely a To Do list of corrections.
Whether you’re giving or receiving comments on a paper, the best use of
comments is for them to be preparation for a conversation.
Writing is an intensely personal thing and receiving comments on your
writing is an emotionally complex event. As a commentator, you want to
validate the considerable work that has been done to produce a paper, but
you must also help the writer improve the paper.
My least favorite thing to hear when I ask someone for comments is: “This
is good!” I know it’s good: I wrote it. What I want to know is how to make
it better.
But commentators should make positive comments about specific moments
in a paper whenever possible, especially if the piece is not particularly strong.
Praise good titles, good thesis statements, good evidence, good research,
good sentences, and so forth.
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There’s nothing I hate more than hearing, “I know it needs revision,” or, “ I
know I need to fix the errors.” When I hear that kind of disclaimer, I have
no idea what you already know you need to fix and what I need to tell you to
fix. At the same time, however, it can be very helpful to alert your
commentators—whether professors or peers—to any specific concerns you
have about a paper (e.g., “Do I get the history of allegory right on pp. 17-
19?”) before they begin to comment on it. Doing so allows your
commentator to direct his or her attention to the areas of most concern.
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— Practicum —
Commenting on Papers
Before you start commenting on a paper, put yourself in the proper frame
of mind. Don’t think to yourself, “I’m going to fix this paper.” Instead
think, “I’m going to try to learn something.” Then, as you read, take note
of two obstacles to your leaning: (1) the moments when ineffective
writing hampers the communication of ideas, and (2) the times when your
understanding of the subject is incompatible with the paper’s
representation of that subject.
It’s best to provide comments on a paper in two forms: (1) marginal
comments on the actual paper itself and (2) a feedback letter that
synthesizes together some key points-of-focus for revision. Below is a
good structure for your feedback letter.
1. Start with the positive: identify the best aspect of the paper.
2. Articulate the writer’s central argument in your own words.
Often, it’s easier to write a good thesis statement from the
outside looking in.
3. Provide a list of three to five areas for the writer to focus on for
revision. Give each area a name (e.g., Implications, Missing Evidence,
Structure of Introduction, etc.) and a short explanation that gives
some suggestions for revision.
4. If you’re able to meet with the writer to have a conversation
about the paper, provide one task for the writer to complete (e.g.,
“Create a list of additional possible examples” or “Draw a new
conceptual map”).
5. If you have minor notes to give to the writer, provide them in a
marked copy of the paper or a list at the end of your letter back
to the writer.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Feedback Letter
Dear Andrew,
I’m sending along my feedback on your draft, including my marginal comments to your
text as well as this feedback letter.
Your thesis, if I were to put it in my own terms, is that Shakespeare’s Hamlet suggests an
irreconcilable tension between honor and truth. On the one hand, the feudalistic culture
of honor in which Hamlet was raised (as symbolized by his warrior father) demands
bravery in the face of injustice; on the other hand, the culture of truth which Hamlet was
exposed to in school (as symbolized by his time at the University of Wittenberg)
demands certainty in the face of doubt. Hamlet’s tragedy results from the fact that, for
Hamlet, bravery and certainty were not simultaneously achievable.
I must say that this argument is quite intriguing, but it’s also very ambitious, which
leaves some room for improvement.
Here are some points for us to focus on in our conference:
• Thesis / Argument: I’ll push you to articulate things in terms of Shakespeare’s
intent. For me, the real question is: Why did Shakespeare establish the tension
between contemplation (including concepts like certainty, truth, and cowardice)
and action (including honor and bravery)? What was Shakespeare saying
something about—something about contemplation? something about honor?
And what, ultimately, was Shakespeare saying?
• Analysis: I’ll encourage you to avoid formulations about Hamlet’s
true/real/innate character. Instead, there’s the character we meet at the start of
the play, and the one we come to know over the course of the play—different
characters, neither one necessarily the true or real Hamlet.
• Implications: Your conclusion is about how, once a certain situation is in play,
tragedy is inevitable. Let’s talk about what you envision that situation to be.
Please let me know if you have any questions about my feedback. I look forward to our
conference, where we can talk more about my marginal feedback, my feedback letter,
and your ideas for revision. It would be great if you were able to come to our
conference with an updated conceptual map and an updated basic outline.
Yours,
Wilson
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Conferences
.
One-on-one conferences is where the real magic of revision happens.
All you have to do to have a good conference is just … talk about ideas.
One of the best ways to write a good thesis is for you to sit down with
someone and describe your essay. Inevitably, you’ll stream-of-conscience
word vomit for about three minutes. Then ask them, What do you think my
thesis is? They’ll be able to give you a simplified version of your main point.
It won’t be exactly right. You’ll have to re-write it for accuracy. But it’ll be
crisper than your long discursive slop.
Often conferences come down to the question, What are you really trying to
argue here?
Conferences are great places for developing ideas because you can test out
ideas to see which ones get a positive response from the person you’re
speaking with. Keep following the ideas that get energy and excitement in the
conversation.
Another reason conferences work well for revising ideas is that they are
conversational. When you’re speaking conversationally with another human,
you tend to avoid the inflated language that often appears in academic
writing.
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The best way to approach conferences is as two people trying to get to the
bottom of something. Think of each other as partners-in-thought, and the
two of you are together trying to build up an idea as big as it can go in the
time available.
The key to a successful conference is for the writer to go into it as the leader
with a clear agenda.
There’s no better feeling than, 20 minutes into a conference, when one of
you says, that’s the argument this paper has to make.
Conferencing allows the writer to take ownership of the revision process.
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— Practicum —
Conferencing Papers
Below are some notes to help you cultivate productive paper conferences.
– The reader should provide substantive feedback in advance, even if
it’s just some points-of-focus for the conversation.
– Plan to chat for about 25 minutes. That seems to be the golden
time—long enough to allow for depth and digression, but short
enough to keep conversation focused on the higher-order Elements
of Academic Argument.
– Most conferences emphasize five of the Elements of Academic
Writing:
1. Argument: Talk about the ideas being argued, not about the paper.
Just have a conversation—two people talking about interesting
ideas.
2. Terms: Figure out the key terms of the argument and make a
conceptual map.
3. Thesis: Once you’ve reached an argument that is compelling to all
involved in the conversation, turn attention to writing a thesis.
4. Implications: once you’ve got a thesis, you can think about
implications. Have some fun brainstorming possible directions
for the conclusion.
5. Structure: You can only think about structure once you’ve formed
up the thesis and implications. You have to know how the paper
will end before you can think about how it should begin.
– Lower-order Elements—such as as evidence, analysis, and counters—
often don’t arise in as much depth in conferences, partly because they
tend to come easily when the higher-order Elements are successful.
– Take a minute at the end of a conference to identify three priorities
for revision.
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Workshop
A writing workshop is a group conversation about a work in progress.
Workshop isn’t simply for the benefit of the writers whose work is being
discussed. Workshops work best when we remember the goal in front of us:
not to “fix” the particular paper being discussed but to use it as an example
and opportunity for discussion. By reading, assessing, and thoughtfully
discussing one person’s paper, all can identify common risks and trouble
spots, evaluate what works and what doesn’t, and derive certain principles
about successful approaches to a particular paper assignment.
A good workshop helps everyone present write or revise a better paper.
The principles that will help you read fellow students’ papers carefully and
thoughtfully (and that will ultimately benefit your writing most) fall into
practical and philosophical categories:
Practical
Read the paper, making notes as you go along. Be sure to note in the margins
where the essay works particularly well for you (“the analysis here is really
convincing—great choice of material from the play”), as well as where you
stop, ask questions, etc. (“I’m not following the transition to this paragraph”
or “the main idea here seems to have changed—you’re now contradicting the
point you made in paragraph 2,” etc.). (You’ll give this annotated copy back
to the writer.)
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At the end, write a (typed) reader’s report. This is a response to the draft as
a whole, about a page in length, focusing on the overall issues that seem to
you most important. Praise the strengths, point out the trouble spots, and
make suggestions for revision (see the “Sample Reader’s Reports” for
examples of good and less good reader’s reports).
On the whole, your stylistic comments should note patterns or habits. What
does the writer seem to do consistently well? Is there a regular difficulty with
unclear phrasing or choppy sentences? Mark those trouble spots (usually
easiest to draw a squiggly line under them), but remember that this is a draft
you’re reading; minute stylistic comments on every sentence are less likely to
help, since at least some of those sentences are likely to be cut. (The
exception: it does make sense to note sentences or phrases that are
particularly striking or successful: every writer likes to know what she or he
did well!)
Philosophical
Specificity helps. In any essay there will be aspects you like and others you
think don’t work as well; the goal is to offer that feedback to the writer in a
way that helps him or her make the best use of the information. “I liked it a
lot” as the sum total of your comments isn’t going to help the writer very
much; neither is “this doesn’t quite work.” How can you make your
comments specific enough so that the writer has some guidance during
revision? What exactly works well and why? Which areas seem less successful
and why? Keying your observations to the particular goals of that assignment,
or to the Elements of Academic Argument, helps keep your comments more
specific.
Put yourself in the writer’s shoes. If you were receiving feedback on an essay,
what kinds of comments would it help you to hear? What kinds of
suggestions can you offer? Remember that you have a fresh perspective to
bring to this piece of writing (a piece which the writer can undoubtedly see a
lot less clearly at this point).
Think about the macro level instead of the micro. We’re not editing; we’re
workshopping. Try stepping back from the essay and thinking about what
would make the whole work better. Should paragraphs be moved? Sections
cut? Rearranged? The writer should be able to leave the discussion with new
ideas about how to approach the essay. (Former Expos Director Nancy
Sommers noted that when experienced writers revise, they often make major
changes in idea and organization; student writers tend to make changes in
word choice or sentences but leave the essay essentially unaltered. How
would an experienced writer approach a revision of this essay?)
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Read for what’s there as well as what’s not. In what ways does the essay
discover new ideas as it progresses? Do the introduction and the stated thesis
“fit” the rest of the essay? How can the opening and the pages that follow be
brought into better harmony with each other?
Relate your experience. Instead of saying, The conclusion is weak, say, I was left
wanting a little bit more at the end.
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Presentations
News broadcasts are an excellent model for academic lectures—scripted to
ensure accuracy of information, presented as a narrative (not an argument),
rehearsed but not robotic, delivered with pace, often enlivened with images
and videos that illustrate but don’t replace the speaker’s words, emphasizing
concrete details and big-picture takeaways, and frequently bringing in
multuiple voices.
Stick to time. If nothing else, stay within your time limit. It’s a show of respect
for your audience and fellow speakers and a sign of experience and expertise.
Nothing loses an audience like going over time.
Reading from a script for a presentation is only a problem when the writing
isn’t good. Reading your remarks indicates that what you’re saying matters,
and it’s important to get it right. Reading prioritizes substance over style.
But there are better and worse ways to read out loud. Record yourself and
watch it back to see what looks good and what doesn't. Practice enough that
you’re familiar with your script and can look up as you read to make eye
contact with your audience.
You can’t just read from an academic paper that you wrote. You’ll need to
re-write certain aspects with a faster pace and simpler sentences. (And maybe
you’ll discover that you should have been wrting like that all along.)
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The exact structure your presentation takes is up to you, but there are certain
Elements of Academic Argument to try to cover:
Introduction
– Orientation
– Question/Problem
– Literature Review
– Method
– Terms
– Thesis
– Stakes
Body
– Evidence
– Analysis
– Counters/Responses
Conclusion
– Argument
– Implications
Don’t run through this list in rote fashion. Emphasize what’s most
fascinating and enlightening about your project (e.g., for some it might be
amazing evidence, for others a sophisticated method, for others compelling
implications, etc.).
Include at least one memorable moment that does something creative to add
energy to your talk.
Always have a question or two ready to ask the audience so that after the talk,
when you ask if there are any questions, if no one says anything, you can
avoid the awkward silence, or the flat ending that says, “Welp, I guess that’s
it.” There’s no worse way to end a presentation than “And that’s all I’ve got."
In-Class Presentations
Whether you’re a student or teacher, an in-class presentation should reflect
the persona you’re crafting as a scholar and professional. Some people adopt
the persona of the existentialist philosopher, some of the community
organizer, some of the chill dude, some of the authoritative expert, some of
the activist, etc. Are you the type of thinker who launches hot takes and epic
takedowns or the type who seeks to synthesize ideas into a unified vision?
You can argue for or against readings or update them based on your own
ideas. There’s not a right or wrong approach as long as you're thinking
carefully about the professional persona you want to craft and convey for
yourself.
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That presentation-of-self will occur in conjunction with a consideration of
how to create a quality discussion. That usually involves some mixture of
presentation, guided discussion, and open-ended conversation. Your
discussion should be grounded in the readings (what’s the best way to do so?
quoting key passages? summarizing main arguments? looking at key
examples?) but also alert to relevant material outside these readings
(connections to previous readings, other studies you’ve done, life
experiences, etc.). You’ll need to find the right balance between the content
you provide that gives your discussion direction, substance, and specificity,
and the contributions from others in the room that create energy, new
insight, and a sense of practicality through conversation.
Try to include something fun or creative. Try to include something newsy
that helps us bring the conversation up-to-date.
You can use some sort of formal presentation (e.g., PowerPoint), but you
don’t need to.
Public Lectures
It’s assumed that your ideas will be fascinating. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t
have been invited to speak. Doing a successful academic event isnt about
what you have to say; it’s about project managing into existence a memorable
educational experience for your audience.
Academics often feel awkward doing publicity. Don’t. Instead of centering
yourself and your feelings, center your audiences and their need to have
access to knowledge.
“Free and open to the public“ isn’t good enough anymore. Do the work of
organizing and facilitating to create the conditions in which people who
might not have much background in academia can experience it.
Ask how you can use your institutional resources to create educational
opportunities for the people beyond your campus.
Go mobile: Meet publics where they are.
Get off campus: Go out into grade-school classrooms, community centers,
homeless shelters, correctional facilities.
Go current: Be responsive to the pressures of the moment.
Go practical: Address the implications of your scholarship for lived
experience.
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Go digital: Use technology to reach publics beyond your geography.
Stop, collaborate, and listen: Work with staff to elevate the nuts and bolts
(e.g., snacks related to the ideas being discussed at the event).
Be active in promotion: Use those materials to communicate the atmosphere
of your work.
Use the rhythm of the year: Plan events around annual holidays,
anniversaries, and special events like elections and Olympics.
Use fun and festivity to cultivate an excitement for scholarship.
Family day: Design academic events where knowledge for the adults is paired
with play for the kids.
De-preciousize: Don’t be stuffy. Food trucks, outdoors, scholarship in
shorts.
Be a community member: Go to other peoples’ things, and they will come to
yours.
Language matters: In planning conversations and materials, don’t describe
communities of people in ways they wouldn’t describe themselves.
Six months before the event:
– Ask “Who do we know?” Work up from your existing community
partnerships to build an audience.
– Partner with community venues, and ask them to bring their
audiences in.
– Find the taste-makers of the community, and invite them to break
bread with you. Tell them they can bring a friend.
– Go interdisciplinary: Program across the disciplines so that
audiences get multiple perspectives on a shared theme.
Three months before the event:
– Prioritize what the public values in your promotional materials—it’s
free, come as you are, bring your kids—over what the academy
values.
– Build energy in the audience by doing small informal meals and
convos in the weeks leading up to the event. Arrange food and
drinks for the event.
One month before the event:
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– Finalize your program.
– Have speakers finalize their remarks, if possible. (That thing we
academics do where we finish our remarks at 6 am in the hotel room
the morning of our talk —that doesn’t work for public events
because there are so many collaborators involved and their
contributions should be informed by the substance of the
speaker[s].)
– Plan to prompt a conversation: Think; pair; share. Small group
convos. Structure your event so that it asks people to make
personalized meaning of the shared conversation. Build in ways for
people to participate in the formal program.
– Plan to elongate the event: Create the conditions for conversation
by inviting audiences to come early to enjoy food and fellowship
with friends and families.
– Plan to take control of the layout of the room: Collapse the physical
distance between speaker and audience. Put everyone on the same
level. Decenter the podium. All the lights on. Turn off the spotlight.
– Secure people to serve as front-of-house greeters.
– Plan to have someone live stream the event: By collaborating with
campus technology resources.
– Plan to have someone live tweet the event: But only with permission
from speakers.
Day of your talk:
– Ensure accessibility for all. Either print out two copies of your
remarks or post your paper and slides online.
– Get your audience thinking. Put a posterboard (or some digital
equivalent) at the doorway asking a question about the topic of the
lecture. Provide note cards for talking back to speakers.
At the event:
– When someone comes to your event, you’re their host. Act as you
act when you host someone in your house. Take the initiative to
make sure they’re comfortable and they know what to do.
– At the entrance, have front-of-house greeters welcome people and
provide directions. If you don’t have greeters, do it yourself.
– Have a screen displayed providing guidance for the audience:
▪ Title of talk
▪ Name of speaker
▪ Contact information / social media handles
▪ Where to find written remarks (e.g., printed at front or
online at a website)
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▪ Social media guidance (e.g., is it ok to post speaker’s
comments online)
– Depreciousize the atmosphere: Make it clear that:
▪ Food and drinks are welcome.
▪ Audiences can come in and out: if you need to use the
bathroom, for goodness’s sake, do.
▪ Pictures are fine: just please don’t use your flash.
▪ Texting is fine: though you might enjoy it more if you put
your phone away.
▪ Audiences can vocalize their feelings about ideas: mmm-
hmm.
– If someone is doing an introduction, have them ask the audience
about their thoughts on the themes of the event (rather than talk
about the speaker's accomplishments).
– One thing folks can do to be supportive of precarious academics
weathering an on-going employment crisis in higher education is to
give someone’s credentials based on articles, books, classes, projects
they’ve created, rather than where they work.
During the speaker’s remarks:
– Less is more: A tight 20 minutes of presentation paired with
something active or conversational can be more effective than an
hour lecture.
– Don’t make an argument: Tell a story.
– Give your narrative of how you went from experiences in your life
to questions you wanted to ask to research you conducted to the
conclusions you drew and their implications for the way you live
your life.
– Take audiences backstage: Show the process through which
scholarship is made.
– Embrace contingency: Relish the moments when the unexpectancies
of public engagement create opportunities for unique experiences.
– Leverage your passion to excite other people: Enthusiasm is
contagious.
– Stand for something, not against something. Even if yo’re doing the
important work of critique, public audiences especially want to know
what you’re fighting for even more than who you’re fighting against.
– Use a social media respondent to transition conversation from the
room to online.
After the event:
– Record video of your event. Post it online. Ask established online
venues if they would like to publish the recording.
– Build a relationship with a community through repeat engagements.
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Academic Publication
Academic writing comes in many different formatting styles—meaning the
style guide followed for citations. These style guides are created by
professional entities devoted to the disciplines which they serve. In the
humanities, common styles include the Modern Language Association
(MLA) style, Chicago style, and the Associated Press (AP) style. In the
sciences (both social and natural sciences), the most common style is the
American Psychological Association (APA) style.
The hallmark of academic writing is the peer-review process. For a piece of
writing to be peer-reviewed is for it to have been, before its publication, read
and approved of by multiple experts in the field to which it is addressed.
Where non-academic publications are accepted or rejected for reasons
relating to their marketability, academic publications must also pass the test
of accuracy (or at least plausibility).
There are three main forms of academic writing--the journal article, the
chapter in an edited collection, and the book monograph.
– A journal article is a relatively short piece (usually around 25 pages)
that appears in a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to a certain
field of study. It appears alongside several other articles written by
different people.
– A chapter in an edited collection is similar in length to a journal
article, and it also appears alongside pieces from other writers, but
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this book chapter appears in a volume more focused around a
specific topic (in contrast to the general field addressed by a journal).
– A monograph is a single-authored argument sustained over a whole
book (usually 150 pages or more).
Academic publication is usually a long process with several stages of revision.
After an idea is arrived at and a paper is written, the academic will often
present the paper at a conference and perhaps teach a course related to the
idea. Based on feedback from these audiences, and continued thought on the
matter, the writer will revise the idea, write an article , and submit it to a peerreviewed
journal. The editor of that journal will read the article, determine
whether or not it’s suitable for the journal, and (if it’s suitable) send the article
off for review by specialists on the subject. For an article to be “suitable,” it
must fit well with the concerns and priorities of the journal; many articles
that are rejected by an editor before even being sent out for peer-review are
rejected not because the paper is crap but because it does not fit exactly with
the concerns of the journal. When a submission is sent along to reviewers,
they read the article, comment on it, and recommend one of several courses
of action for the editor: accept the article, accept the article with revisions,
ask the writer to revise and resubmit the article, or reject the article. The
editor will consider the readers’ reports, come to a decision, and contact the
writer to inform them about the decision, usually sending along the readers’
reports as well. The process from article submission to decision can take
anywhere from one month to two years, depending on the journal and the
discipline (in general, science journals move more quickly than humanities
journals). A “revise and resubmit” can extend the timeline another three to
six months; a rejection will sometimes come with a recommendation of
another journal where the article may be more suitable or may have better
luck. Once accepted, an article will appear in print anywhere from four
months to two years after its acceptance. If that article is part of a larger
project that the writer is working on, it may reappear (perhaps revised again)
as a chapter in a book, often alongside other previously published articles that
have appeared in other peer-reviewed journals. If the writer has a book in
mind, they will put together a book proposal and send it to publishers, who
will often respond with comments and sometimes an offer to publish the
book. If the proposal is accepted, the writer revises the various pieces into a
cohesive manuscript, which, when finalized, is sent off to readers for peer
review. Based on comments from those readers, the writer will revise the
manuscript one final time, and then it will appear in print anywhere from four
months to one year later.
Academics are not paid for journal articles, and they are not paid well for
books. Compensation for academic publishing is somewhat circuitous:
tenure and promotion are largely dependent on publication. Thus, the phrase
“publish or perish” has become popular in academic parlance. Academics
understand that it’s part of their jobs to research and publish. In this sense,
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students, alumni, and philanthropic groups (at private institutions), as well as
tax dollars from the general population (at public institutions), subsidize
academic research through the faculty salaries they pay for; those sources of
university funding also pay the often exorbitant fees academic journals charge
universities and colleges for subscriptions.
An ideal track for an academic is to publish one or two articles in respected
journals while in graduate school, to gain employment (partly based on those
articles) as a “tenure track” assistant professor, to turn their dissertation into
a book, and then to earn a promotion to the rank of associate professor, at
which point tenure is usually granted. The tenure process usually takes six to
eight years, and then it can take another 6 to 10 years for the associate
professor to be promoted to a full professor, which is again largely based on
publications, often a second book.
While public writing is shorter and less specialized, it usually comes at the
end of the research and writing process. It offers the key take-aways,
packaged in easy-to-access writing for non-specialist audiences. Public
writing is often compensated, but not well: a writer might get $100 for an
article based on ten years of research.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Submission History
for “‘To be, or not to be’: Shakespeare Against Philosophy”
March 2015: First draft written.
Dec. 2015: Submitted to British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Excerpts from
reader’s reports:
 “It simply failed to persuade this reader that a viable interpretative possibility
worthy of contemplation is being offered.”
 “What I think the author is genuinely picking out, is that Hamlet’s
philosophizing (and not just here) is more of an evasion of the personal than a
full-blooded philosophical streak.”
 “It doesn’t contribute anything of real substance.”
 “Smollett thought it, despite the admiration accorded it, ‘a heap of absurdities,
whether we consider the situation, the sentiment, the argumentation, or the
poetry’”
March 2016: Presented at Shakespeare and the Risks of Philosophy conference
July 2016: Presented at Shakespeare the Philosopher conference
Oct. 2016: Submitted to Shakespeare Quarterly. Excerpts from reader’s reports:
• “Just does not really alter or advance our understanding of the play.”
Nov. 2016: Submitted to Renaissance Drama. Excerpts from reader’s reports:
 “Hard to follow even as an essay in the tradition of Montaigne or Barthes.”
 “it is just too long.”
 “For the relationship between philosophy and drama, see Martin Puchner.”
April 2017: Submitted to Shakespeare. Excerpts from reader’s reports:
 “I heard this paper presented at a conference, where it provoked profound
skepticism on the part of the audience and convinced no one (including me).”
 “The author needs to take more seriously than he does just why his
‘interpretation’ has been missing from the tradition, by and large.”
 “Posed significant questions in arresting ways.”
 “I find myself in disagreement with what is fundamental to the argument.”
 “I wonder whether an engagement with Calderwood’s ‘To Be And Not To Be’
might be productive.”
June 2017: Submitted to Shakespeare. Excerpt from editor’s report:
 “I am now basically happy to accept it.”
July 2017: Article published online.
Oct. 2018: Article appears in print.
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Public Writing
Stylistically, embrace the absurd; mix “high” culture and “low”; foreground
the comical. Give the cool, quirky evidence. Keep quotation to a minimum.
Make sentences snappy and short. It’s OK to write in the first person. Ask
how your own story and experiences relate to your material. Rain down fury
on the forces of badness in the world, if needed. Call them out. Put them on
blast. But be prepared for anyone you discuss to read your essay and, if they’re
unhappy, send a sharply worded letter. Don’t cower from speaking the truth,
but make sure you’re accurately representing people and their ideas.
Write with joy. We’re all desperate for happiness. How can your essay offer
a little corner of delight in a weary world? Remember that public readers love
a feel-good story, and your enthusiasm for the importance of your topic will
be contagious. Make it jokey. But not hokey. Don’t try to make jokes if you’re
not funny. Use lists, metaphors, analogies, memes, and other creative
gestures. If there’s something in your research that is wild and hilarious, get
that in your public piece, even if it’s not central to the issue. Humor is an
important route into education for public audiences.
Your title should be short and punchy: no colons, and no more than eight
words. Write with confidence. This is your research. You know it frontwards
and backwards, and your audience doesn’t. You don’t need to argue a
position (persuade someone to accept it). You simply need to educate
someone (convey knowledge that you have that they don’t). The standard
length for op-eds and much other public writing is 800 to 1000 words, which
is about three double-spaced pages. Your goal is to pack as much content as
possible into that space. No wasted words, no repetition, no mercy in editing
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your sentences to get to the point. Content is king. Without content, style is
just fluff.
Also know what not to do in public writing. You won’t have space for
academic meta-discourse—e.g., a text statement (“This essay explores…”) or
a flag for the thesis (“In this essay, I argue that…”). You’ll probably cut the
literature review where you discuss previous scholarship in the field—though
there are some exceptions, especially if you’re making an intervention in a
field. If so, you’ll only have about four sentences to map the terrain of the
field, provide key quotations, and carve out your intervention. Throughout
the essay, you won’t have much space for quotation, so select quotes wisely,
and summarize the rest in your own words. There’s also not much room for
analysis. Keep the focus on your amazing evidence and the argument that
holds it all together. Trim back the analysis. Thesis, evidence, and what’s at
stake—that’s what matters most.
Structurally, plan to spend about 20 percent of your essay on the
introduction, 70 percent on the body, and 10 percent on the conclusion. You
can develop a cap-and-trade system (e.g., take 10 percent from the body for
the conclusion). Keep in mind that your first paragraph(s) will be the most
read, the last paragraph(s) the least. Structure where you put what’s most
important accordingly.
In the introduction, “peg” your argument to something happening now: an
upcoming event, recent headlines, current controversies, anniversaries, the
yearly holiday cycle, etc. It may be a smaller story that’s made the rounds in
the past week, a larger story that’s been in the news for a month, or an
ongoing issue that keeps showing up year after year. Start with something
shocking or surprising: some amazing statistic(s), a cool quotation, or a funny
anecdote. Or start with your thesis as the first sentence. You need a thesis
within the first three paragraphs. And those should be very short paragraphs:
two or three sentences each. Your thesis should be tweetable: that means 280
characters or less, which equals about 25 words. Our introductions tend to
follow one of three possible structures:
1. The Cannonball
– Paragraph 1 (3 Sentences): Peg, Orientation, and Thesis
– Paragraph 2 (2 Sentences): What’s at Stake
2. The Exemplar
– Paragraph 1 (3 Sentences): Peg, some stunning Evidence
– Paragraph 2 (3 Sentences): Thesis and What’s at Stake
3. The Q&A
– Paragraph 1 (4 Sentences): Peg, Orientation, Evidence, Analysis,
Question/Problem
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– Paragraph 2 (2 Sentences): Thesis and What’s at Stake
Note that editors love The Cannonball.
Apart from your thesis, what matters most in public writing is evidence and
what’s at stake. Your piece will succeed or fail based on the quality of the
evidence: the more specific the better. Amazing statistics, captivating stories,
quotes that stop readers in their tracks to say “Wow.” That’s what public
writing is all about. Don’t make an argument; tell a story. The way you tell
the story should make the argument for you. Illustrate, rather than argue,
your points.
Plan out the body of your essay. First, identify five pieces of key evidence.
These may be amazing statistics, great quotations, bizarre facts, unknown
texts, etc. The more specific the better. Anything wild that will make their
readers say, “Wow!” Second, they identify what story they’re telling (“This is
the story of …”). Who are the main characters in this story? What is the
central conflict? They break their story down into parts. It may be into three
parts: Beginning, Middle, and End. It may be into more, using, e.g., Freytag’s
Pyramid: Exposition, Inciting Incident, Rising Action, Crisis, Climax, Falling Action,
Denouement. Third, they figure out where in this story—chronologically—
each of key pieces of evidence appear. The goal is to use the key evidence to
provide detail and texture to the overarching narrative. Finally, they write out
the body of the essay—their story. Paragraphs are short (three to four
sentences each). Many chunk out sections with short headings (no more than
six words, no colons).
With respect to what’s at stake, be ambitious in connecting the details of your
argument up with life today. You can go political or ethical if you like, but
that is not the only way to have big implications. It’s possible to remain in an
analytical register (I prefer it), asking how your argument brings us to
understand our world differently, rather than the personal behavior or policy
implications that would follow it.
Submission
Most public writing gets published because a writer has some sort of
established relationship with a venue or editor. Do you have any
relationships? If so, that’s the first place to submit to.
Have you published multiple award-winning books and essays? Do you have
250,000 followers on Twitter? If not, then avoid major national venues like
New York Times and The Atlantic. These venues publish people who bring an
audience along with them.
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Look for the tightest fit between what your essay is about and the topics a
venue covers.
Seriously consider local venues: hometown newspapers, outlets at your
college, etc.
Most venues have instructions for submissions on their websites. Look for a
“Submissions” or “Contact” page.
Create a list of possible venues. Then order that list according to where you
most want to see your essay appear. Submit your essay to your first choice.
If they don’t respond (which is what happens 85 percent of the time) or pass
on your essay (10 percent of the time), then just move on to the next one on
your list.
Be prepared for the response to be: “Great: it will be live on our website in
an hour.” Only send out writing you’re confident in and would be proud to
have your name attached to.
Remember that comments sections are not where good intellectual
discussions happen: expect the worst, smile, ignore, and move on when it
comes.
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The Writing ProcessJeffrey R. Wilson
Public Writing Submission
Dear Editors,
I’d like to see if you’re interested in an essay I’ve written called “In Defense of
Polonius,” which might be pegged to Father’s Day on June 19. The piece argues
that Polonius—the character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet—is not a bumbling old
fool but a single father struggling with work-life balance.
I’m attaching the piece, complete at around 2,300 words. I’m happy to work with
you on edits, if needed. Since it’s a timely piece, I’d appreciate an expression of
interest within two days, if possible.
I’m a faculty member in the Writing Program at Harvard University, where I teach
a course called “Why Shakespeare?” My research has been featured on National
Public Radio, New York Times, MSNBC, and Literary Hub, and I’ve written for
public venues including CNN, Academe, Salon, Zócalo Public Square,
and MarketWatch. My first book, Shakespeare and Trump, was reviewed in
venues such as The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Inside Higher Ed,
and Shakespeare Survey. A second book, Shakespeare and Game of Thrones,
was made into an online course called Bard of Thrones and featured on the
Folger Shakespeare Library’s podcast, Shakespeare Unlimited. My third
book, Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare
and Disability History, will arrive from Temple University Press in October 2022
and has been previewed on podcasts such as The State of Shakespeare.
This piece comes from a project called Essays on Hamlet, which asks big
conceptual questions with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answers
them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar.
Thanks for your consideration.
Regards,
Jeff Wilson
—
Jeffrey R. Wilson, Ph.D.
Harvard College Writing Program
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Appendix
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Appendix I
The Elements of Academic Argument
in Action
The Hamlet Syndrome
Text (the thing I’m interpreting):
Hamlet’s madness in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet
Figure 11: The Kinds of Evidence (Text)
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316
Textual Evidence (details from my text):
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (ca. 1599):
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,’
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,’
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me. (1.5.172-82)
Figure 12: The Kinds of Evidence (Text, Textual Evidence)
Analysis (interpretation of that textual evidence):
The question is not Is Hamlet mad or just pretending? because he clearly says that he is
going to fake it, “to put an antic disposition on.”
Orientation (helping my reader understand the evidence I’m about to present):
Shakespeare took Hamlet’s feigned madness from his source, the Danish historian
Saxo Grammaticus’s History of the Danes.
Historical Evidence (which came before my text and influenced it):
Saxo Grammaticus, Historiae Danicae (12th c.):
Amleth … feared lest too shrewd a behavior might make his uncle
suspect him. So he chose to feign dulness, and pretend an utter lack of
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317
wits. This cunning worse not only concealed his intelligence but ensured
his safety. (62)
Figure 13: The Kinds of Evidence (Text, Textual Evidence, Historical Evidence)
Analysis (interpretation of that historical evidence):
Saxo’s Amleth feigns stupidity to conceal his knowledge of his uncle’s misdeeds as
he bides his time to mature.
Historical Scholarship (aiding interpretation of that historical evidence):
Stephen Greenblatt, “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet” (2004):
In order to grow to adulthood—to survive long enough to be able to
exact revenge—Amleth feigned madness, persuading his uncle that he
could never pose a danger.
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Figure 14: The Kinds of Evidence (Text, Textual Evidence, Historical Evidence,
Historical Scholarship)
Analysis (interpretation of my historical evidence aided by my Historical Scholarship):
Saxo’s Amleth wanted to conceal his plans for revenge, but Shakespeare’s Hamlet
has no good reason to act mad. Hamlet’s feigned madness does not make him an
evil genius. It makes him deficient in judgement because it is irrational to think that
feigning madness might help his plight in any way. It does not shield his intelligence,
as it did for Amleth, nor does it lull his uncle into a false sense of security. Instead,
it actually excites his uncle’s suspicion.
Question/Problem (why my text needs interpretation):
Why does Shakespeare’s Hamlet pretend to be crazy.
Thesis (my central claim about my text, the answer to my question):
Hamlet feigns madness because he is already mad.
Terms (key concepts in my argument):
This argument hinges on a distinction between two kinds of “madness”—insanity
and mental illness.
Theoretical Scholarship (helping me interpret my text by providing abstract ideas):
Zachary D. Torry and Stephen B. Billick, “Overlapping Universe: Understanding
Legal Insanity and Psychosis” (2010):
Insanity is a legal term rather than a psychiatric or scientific one. Black’s
Law Dictionary defines it as ‘any mental disorder severe enough that it
prevents a person from having legal capacity and excuses the person from
criminal or civil responsibility. Insanity is a legal, not a medical, standard.’
It is a disorder that impairs the human mind and prevents distinguishing
Appendix
319
between actions that are right or wrong. Mental illnesses are disorders of
the brain that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, moods, and ability to
relate to others. They are brain disorders resulting in a diminished
capacity for coping with the demands of life. (255)
Figure 15: The Kinds of Evidence (Text, Textual Evidence, Historical Evidence,
Historical Scholarship, Theoretical Scholarship)
Stakes (what I plan to do with my argument in my conclusion):
Bringing these terms to Shakespeare’s play allows us to theorize “the Hamlet
Syndrome”: someone can be sane – knowing right from wrong – but still mentally
ill; the decision to commit a crime can emerge from a mind that is neither fully
incapacitated nor fully functional.
Textual Evidence (more details from my text):
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (ca. 1599):
O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
That, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flatt, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world! (1.2.129-34)
Analysis (interpreting that textual evidence):
Hamlet is, in modern terms, mentally ill when we first meet him. His father’s death
two months ago and his mother’s remarriage to his uncle one month later have so
upset Hamlet that he soliloquizes in a manner that we today could easily associate
with suicidal depression.
Textual Evidence (another example drawn from my text):
Appendix
320
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (ca. 1599):
O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me up stiffly. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. (1.5.93-97)
Analysis (interpreting that textual evidence):
This passage is a clever allusion to the Globe theatre where Hamlet was first
performed, but it is also an allusion to Hamlet’s mental illness, to a mind (“globe”)
that has been overloaded, is preoccupied, is not able to attend to the events Hamlet
is experiencing, and is not processing information rationally.
Critical Scholarship (a critic who has looked at the same text that I’m interpreting):
Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge (1967):
Hamlet is not mad. He never is…. [He] never loses touch with reality….
He always knows what he is doing. (149)
Analysis (interpreting that scholarly evidence):
The problem with Prosser’s statement is that it conflates the fact that Hamlet is not
psychotic (“[He] never loses touch with reality”) and the fact that he is legally sane
(“He always knows what he is doing”) with a claim for mental health (“Hamlet is
not mad”). Someone can be “mad” and still be connected to reality; someone can
be legally sane but still mentally ill.
Figure 16: The Kinds of Evidence (Text, Textual Evidence, Historical Evidence,
Historical Scholarship, Theoretical Scholarship, Critical Scholarship)
Critical Scholarship (another critic who has looked at the same text that I’m interpreting):
Appendix
321
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespeare (1853):
Hamlet’s wildness is but half false; he plays that subtle trick of pretending
to act only when he is very near really being what he acts. (156)
Analysis (interpreting that scholarly evidence):
As Coleridge recognizes, one kind of madness manifests paradoxically as the
feigning of another, more severe kind of madness.
Argument (synthesizing my points into a central claim):
The question of Hamlet’s sanity can be distinguished from the ques- tion of his
mental health: whether he is attached to reality or seeing things that are not there is
one question, and whether or not he is able to think rationally and function in
society is another. Insofar as the ghost is real, at least in Act I, Hamlet evidences
neither delusions nor hallucinations, the hallmarks of any psychotic disorder. At the
same time, he is clearly not mentally healthy. His mental illness leads him to respond
to the revela- tion of his father’s murder with the irrational decision to act
completely psychotic. One kind of madness surfaces as the purposeful malingering
of another, more severe kind of madness.
Implications (mobilizing the knowledge of my argument for material beyond my text):
The Hamlet Syndrome has implications for our understanding of failed insanity
defenses. What the example of Hamlet suggests is that, when an insanity defense
fails, onlookers tend to use their knowledge of a feigned madness as the basis for a
belief that someone is mentally healthy when really he or she might be ill.
322
Appendix II
Sample Papers
In Defense of Polonius
323
What the Viral Game Among Us Reveals About
How Groups Fall Apart
333
How COVID Will Make Us Stronger: Twelve
Students from Around the World on the Virus and
the Future
343
323
Jeffrey R. Wilson
In Defense of Polonius
Your wife dies. You raise two children by yourself. You build a great
career to provide for your family. You send your son off to college in another
country, though you know he’s not ready. Now the prince wants to marry your
daughter—that’s not easy to navigate. Then—get this—while you’re trying to
save the queen’s life, the prince murders you. Your death destroys your kids.
They die tragically. And what do you get for your efforts? Centuries of
Shakespeare scholars dumping on you.
Many echo Hamlet’s characterization of Polonius as a “tedious old
fool” (2.2.213) and “foolish prating knave” (3.4.216). In 1736, the first essay
ever written on Hamlet (attributed to George Stubbes) called Polonius a
“Buffoonish Statesman” (23). Samuel Johnson saw an old man “declining into
dotage” (183). William Hazlitt thought Polonius “talks very sensibly” but “acts
very foolishly” (86) Closer to our time, Diane Dreher also hated Polonius—”by
far the most reprehensible father” in Shakespeare’s plays (52)—but for a
different reason. He’s a patriarch, a misogynist, an authoritarian who dominates
Ophelia’s will and decimates her verve for life. “The death of Polonius,” Elaine
Robinson argues, “is a symbol of Shakespeare’s attack on patriarchy” (67).
Polonius isn’t a good father. Good fathers don’t make good drama. His
failings are central to my argument that Polonius is a good character, more
complex than critics usually recognize. If we see Polonius not through the eyes
of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—the point of view Shakespeare’s play asks
audiences to adopt—but in analogy to the common challenges of twenty-firstcentury
parenting, Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance
Appendix
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who sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being. And that approach
opens other modern resonances of the family dynamics in Shakespeare’s plays,
such as the rocky stepfamily that Prince Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, and King
Claudius find themselves in.
⬧⬧⬧
Hamlet includes traces—only hints—of Polonius’s possible
prehistories. His name points to Poland, Denmark’s foreign enemy, especially in
light of the change of the character’s name from the “Corimbus” of the first
quarto (Broadus). However and whyever that change occurred, Shakespeare
must have realized that the second scene of his play introduces “Polonius”
shortly after the first scene relates the story of how King Hamlet “in an angry
parle … smote the sledded Polacks on the ice” (1.1.61-62). There are two
possibilities.
Perhaps “Polonius” simply means “one from Poland,” and he is an
immigrant in Denmark. If so, whether he came before or after the affair on the
ice, Polonius would have suffered xenophobic hostility from Danish nationalists.
Maybe, like one of my childhood friends—an immigrant from a war-torn
country—he cultivated a clownish persona that covered over some devastating
trauma.
Or Polonius could be an honorary name bestowed for his military
service, like “Coriolanus,” the name given to Caius Marcius for conquering
Corioli. This Polonius served the Danish side, may have switched from the Poles
to the Danes, or perhaps engineered the bloody “parle.” Such deviousness fits
with Polonius’s secret plotting in Hamlet.
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The only clear backstory that Shakespeare is that Polonius was an actor
at university (3.2.91). Drama attracts certain kinds of students: they tend to be
soulful, gregarious, and eager for an audience. Polonius played the part of Julius
Caesar, associating him not with the secret plotter—”Brutus killed me”
(3.2.95)—but with a political leader. He still fancies himself a literary critic, and
his try-hard erudition when commenting on the players (2.2.324-26) smacks of
someone who wasn’t raised in academia but is enamored with that world (we
can recognize our own).
It’s unclear when and how Polonius met his wife—Ophelia and
Laertes’s mother—but she seems to be dead. The only reference to her comes
late in the play, when Claudius tells Laertes to calm down:
That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries ‘Cuckold!’ to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother. (4.2.118-19)
When Laertes says “even here,” he points to his forehead, between his two
“[eye]brow[s].” His brow looks like his mother’s brow. That could create a bond
between Polonius, who lost his wife, and Laertes, who looks like her. Was she
from Poland? Did she know Polonius at university? Was she an outsider in
Denmark, maybe from southern Europe, and that’s why their children have
Greek and Roman names? Did she die giving birth to Ophelia? Or later in life?
Do her children remember her? How did they process their grief at such a young
age? Laertes and Ophelia have a close relationship, probably forged after the
loss of their mother. There’s a lot of trust there. They are playful and
affectionate.
Appendix
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Perhaps a grieving Polonius threw himself into his job, climbing the
ranks of King Hamlet’s council to become the lead advisor to Denmark’s royal
family. The first thing the play tells us about Polonius comes from Claudius
speaking to Laertes: “The head is not more native to the heart, / The hand more
instrumental to the mouth, / Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father”
(1.2.47-49). Claudius loves Polonius, listens to him, hangs on his words, follows
his advice. That kind of trust must be earned. Maybe Polonius was in on the
assassination.
⬧⬧⬧
The hints of Polonius’s prehistory create context for the scenes where
we meet the man. I read his verbosity as dad jokes. Filled with puns and
wordplay, dad jokes are cheesy, corny, cringe, clean, not dangerous humor. I’m
hungry. Hi Hungry—I’m Polonius. Dad jokes appeal to young children, who
quickly outgrow them. This kind of humor makes people roll their eyes and
shake their heads in embarrassment. It isn’t funny in its own right. It’s funny
because there’s a self-awareness that it’s not funny. The comedy comes in the
affected oafishness of the teller, who makes himself available to be the butt of
the joke. “Tender yourself more dearly,” Polonius says to Ophelia, “Or—not to
crack the wind of the poor phrase / Wronging it thus—you’ll tender me a fool”
(1.3.106-08). Dad jokes aren’t meant to be funny as much as they signal the
presence of a caring, safe relationship. That’s why, even though they’re
obnoxious, they’re also endearing. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” Polonius says in
a long speech to Gertrude. “I will be brief” (2.2.90-92). Polonius is self-aware in
these moments. He’s not an incompetent fool. He’s making fun of himself,
Appendix
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using self-deprecating humor strategically to build relationships. He’s in on the
joke.
Any father would struggle sending a son with a penchant for youthful
rebellion off to college in another country. Polonius is paying for Laertes’s
education but knows that the boy has risk factors. He’s a kid who lost his mother
early, experienced some trauma, processed it by forming close bonds with his
remaining family, is a bit of a hot head, and likes to party. It’s time for Laertes
to become his own person, but the freedom that comes with college in another
country without any familial safeguards gives Polonius pause. Above all,
Polonius wants Laertes to know that he’s got a safe, caring, loving family back
home. They’ve been through a lot together. They understand each other. The “to
thine own self be true” speech (1.3.54-82) is one long dad joke.
Polonius sends money and letters to Laertes through their family friend
Reynaldo—solid dad move—but it’s also a chance to spy on Laertes because
Polonius actually doesn’t trust his son at all. The weird plan Polonius
develops—before seeing Laertes, Reynaldo will ask around town about him,
making up stories that make Laertes look bad to get people to share their own
tales of the boy’s exploits (2.1.6-71)—points forward to Polonius’s tendency to
overlook how his actions as a father can do real harm to the well-being of his
children.
Frankly, I don’t know what I would do if I heard the heir to the crown
in my country had declared he was deeply in love with my daughter: that’s a
tough parenting situation. Ophelia is coming of age. She doesn’t have a mom to
talk to. Her brother has moved out. Her dad works all the time. That’s how
Ophelia started spending time with Hamlet. He himself lost a parent recently.
Appendix
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Ophelia knows what it’s like. And now they’re in love. But Hamlet’s still
processing. He’s not in a good place.
Polonius is worried about his daughter—he doesn’t want her to get
hurt—but fathers have no idea what it’s like to be a young woman. He wants to
protect her. He also wants to protect himself. He fears the relationship with
Hamlet will go south and complicate his career in the castle. He comes down
hard on Ophelia—too hard. He’s controlling, dismissive, degrading, telling her
to think of herself as a baby: his baby (1.3.87-135). He knows she’s becoming a
woman, but he doesn’t know that the power-shouting he used to keep Ophelia
from playing on the castle walls when she was a girl comes across completely
differently when it’s young love. We are firmly in Romeo and Juliet territory
here.
Polonius didn’t invent the patriarchy. He just knows how to survive it.
It’s clearly a situation where a conversation with his daughter about her feelings
and options would be best. Polonius is ill-equipped for that approach.
Hamlet ends up being a massive asshole to Ophelia. He uses her to
convince everyone he’s crazy, and it shakes Ophelia to her core. Polonius’s
response—”I am sorry” (2.1.103)—is surprisingly moving. He apologizes a
second time: “I am sorry that with better heed and judgment / I had not quoted
him” (2.1.108-09). Polonius should have seen it coming. And trying to dominate
his daughter’s will wasn’t the best approach. Her mother would have known
what to do.
Let’s hope most fathers wouldn’t, like Polonius, put their job ahead of
the well-being of their daughters, although we see that all the time. Polonius
needs his job to support his family. Tragically, that leads him to harm his family.
Appendix
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He puts his daughter in an unsafe situation, using her as bait to spy on Hamlet
for Claudius. Hamlet berates her. It’s traumatizing. Polonius just sits there and
watches. What kind of father wouldn’t intervene? Wouldn’t comfort his
daughter? He just talks with Claudius about matters of state (3.1.75-184).
Polonius ends up giving his life for his job. While hiding in the queen’s
bedchamber, he hears Hamlet attacking his mother. “What wilt thou do?” she
cries. “Thou wilt not murder me? / Help, ho!” (3.4.21-22). Polonius tries to save
her: “What ho! Help!” (3.4.22). He becomes a victim of murder by an unhinged
aristocrat who then callously plays games with the dead body: “I’ll lug the guts
into the neighbor room” (3.4.213). Do the Shakespeare scholars who adopt
Hamlet’s view of Polonius realize that they’re cozying up to an unhinged
murderer?
Polonius’s death breaks his children. Their mom not being around
makes the loss of their father even tougher. Ophelia deteriorates into a mental
health crisis and eventually suicide. Anger drives Laertes to violence that
completely backfires, resulting in his death. Where do our sympathies lie now?
⬧⬧⬧
In 2002, Catharine R. Stimpson suggested that there are many
Poloniuses in society today, those mansplaining pundits on cable news:
He is, I have decided, a powerful figure in a large institution,
preferably the executive branch of the federal government.
However, he moves easily among institutions. He can work in
the private sector or a think tank or a public policy school in
an affluent private university. When he is not in the
government, and is instead rusticating in the private sector, he
Appendix
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likes being a pundit. In that role, he enjoys writing op-ed
pieces and going on television. (98)
There are the public Poloniuses that Stimpson describes and the private Polonius
I have sought to recover. He’s not a good father. I hate his patriarchal parenting.
Yet, if push came to shove, and I had to pick which of the parents in Hamlet I
would want as my own, it would be Polonius.
King Hamlet is a father who asks his son to murder someone, which
ends up destroying the child’s life. Queen Gertrude is a mother who marries her
dead husband’s brother, then is baffled that her son is struggling. King Claudius
is a stepfather only because he killed his stepson’s actual father. Shakespeare
filled the play with terrible parents.
On the one hand, each, like Polonius, puts their career before their
kid, resulting in the deterioration of the family. On the other, the Hamlet family
is also weirdly relatable in modernity, where stepfamilies are common. If
Polonius shows what can happen when a family loses a parent, the Hamlets are
an example of separation, remarriage, and efforts to negotiate a new family
dynamic—that’s all in play before the murder of King Hamlet comes to light.
And each parent has enough traces in the text to suggest a backstory that
contextualizes any easy judgment of their parenting.
King Hamlet is the divorced father who hates seeing his ex-wife with a
new man and uses his child as leverage in a power play against her. Queen
Gertrude is the single mother who wants to feel romantic love for the first time
in a while but fails to appreciate how her new life affects her child’s emotions.
And King Claudius is the new stepfather who just wants everyone to be happy
Appendix
331
and tries to relate to his stepson but finds himself in an emotionally combustible
situation.
The impulse is to say, Oh, Shakespeare’s families are so modern. It’s
better to note that the term “non-traditional family” is absurd because literature
and history are filled with single parents and stepfamilies in which the
challenges of work-life balance are heightened—and everyone’s a critic.
Appendix
332
Works Cited
Broadus, E.K. “Polonius.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 1935,
pp. 337-355.
Dreher, Diane. Domination And Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in
Shakespeare. University Press of Kentucky, 1986.
Hazlitt, William. Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. C.H. Reynell for R. Hunter
and C. and J. Ollier, 1817.
Johnson, Samuel, editor. Hamlet. The Plays of William Shakespeare, vol. 8,
1765, pp. 129-316..
Robinson, Elaine L. Shakespeare Attacks Bigotry: A Close Reading of Six Plays.
McFarland, 2009.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton
Shakespeare. Third edition. Norton, 2016.
Stimpson, Catharine R. “Polonius, Our Pundit.” The American Scholar, vol. 71,
no. 4, 2002, pp. 97-108.
Stubbes, George (attributed). Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet. W.
Wilkins, 1736.
333
2021 Collaborative Student Essay
What the Viral Game Among Us
Reveals About How Groups Fall Apart
What’s the best way to run a company, a team, or a classroom? To keep
a group alive and thriving, it helps to know why groups fall into dysfunction.
And bosses, coaches, and teachers can learn how groups work—and don’t
work—in an unexpected place: the viral video game Among Us.
If you’ve got a teenager, they probably play it. Among Us is a game
where 10-15 people are on a space ship and one to three of them are Imposters
who sabotage the mission by killing off the crew. Everyone else is a crewmate
tasked with maintaining the ship. The crewmates win if they finish all their tasks
or vote out the Imposter(s). The Imposters win if they kill everyone or sabotage
the ship. It seems to be just a fun game of sabotage and detection, but Among Us
actually reveals how groups fall apart. And the game can help us “hack” the
groups we need to build and maintain in our workplaces, locker rooms, and
schools.
This makes Among Us the most recent example of a video game that
cultivates valuable real-world knowledge. Studies have shown that Mario Kart
makes better drivers (Li, Chen and Chen). Sim City teaches a person about urban
infrastructure. The Legend of Zelda trains brains to solve puzzles. Wolfenstein
immerses people in World War II history. Portal improves spatial awareness.
Dark Souls teaches gritty determination through hardship. Fallout shows the
instability of governing organizations. Tetris improves your reflexes. So what
does Among Us teach us?
Appendix
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The game is most well-known for skyrocketing to success as the world
went into lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic (see Winkie, Bauer,
Epstein, Rodriguez, Baranowski, Farokhmanesh, Osteen, Khan, and Shinkle).
The game was originally released in 2018 by Innersloth, and no one seems to
have noticed. The creators made a Twitter account for the game. Their tweets
got zero “likes.” But then the creator of Henry Stickman, another popular indie
game, retweeted Among Us, which gave it some popularity. It gained
momentum in mid-2019 in Mexico, Brazil, and Korea after SR-JKaif, a popular
Twitch streamer, played it and started promoting it. The popular gaming
platform Steam saw this, and asked Innersloth to bring their game to Steam.
They got three months of sales in two day. A staff game at Twitch soon had
30,000 viewers. And then the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020.
The viral success of Among Us is closely bound up with the fact that it
offered community during a time when everyone was isolated. “Unlike many
games where socialization is merely an option,” says Andrew Borman, a digital
games curator at The Strong, “it is required for Among Us, connecting players in
a way many other games cannot” (“Play and Curation” 26).
Several commentators have identified real-world analogies for the
group dynamics seen in Among Us. During peak pandemic times, Vice writer
Sean Sands wrote, “Among Us is not just the game of 2020, its 2020 the game,”
suggesting that the game replicated the feeling we have when going to the
grocery store. Writing for Zocalo Public Square, Joe Mathews observed his son
playing the game and drew parallels with the unstableness of the group and the
Appendix
335
perilous position of the California government: “Among Us reproduces the
paranoia that’s become rampant in our state and our society—our current sense
that nothing is for real and no one is to be trusted.” Building from specific
analogies like these to a generalizable theory, we can ask what the game reveals
about group dynamics.
Basically, Among Us shows how groups fall apart when pressure to
succeed short-circuits communication and collaboration. Among Us shows what
happens to a group when something isn’t quite right, yet no one knows exactly
what’s wrong. Recognizing the presence of an unknown danger to the integrity
of the group brings members to act frantically and illogically.
The group dynamics of Among Us are in full operation before the game
play even begins. One person—de facto, a leader—makes a server. That
organizer gives out the code. Others join in. Already, the organizer of the game
has power and credibility.
The game assigns all players a role—either a crewmate or an imposter.
Suddenly, you’re in a spaceship and all hell breaks loose. Everyone scatters. The
imposter’s task is to kill all the crew mates without being detected. The
crewmates must complete a series of menial but time-consuming tasks. Swipe
your key card here. Med Bay Scan! Imposters sabotage the ship’s electricity or
oxygen. Crewmates rush to fix it. Don’t fix the oxygen level soon enough, and
you die. Only the imposter can move through vents. It’s called “venting,” and
it’s awesome. Then the imposer makes their move. They kill a crewmate. The
Appendix
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cold body lies there on the ground until someone discovers it and reports it.
Folks, it’s time for an emergency meeting.
The impostor sabotages the group, but also the group starts to sabotage
itself. After someone finds a body, the group comes together with one goal: find
the imposter among them. They have 90 seconds to either vote out someone
whom they believe to be the imposter or skip voting if they’re not sure. You
can’t trust anyone, and you don’t have much time. The apprehension of one
crewmate being an impostor is too much to handle, and the group breaks down
into fear and uncertainty. People act on their paranoia. The voting room turns to
chaos. Yellow is “sus”—Among Us lingo for “suspicious.” People hurl
accusations. People defend themselves. People get offended for being accused.
Sometimes the one who yells the loudest wins. Vote him out. If I’m wrong, vote
me out. The group gets agitated, can’t remain calm, can’t think logically. Chaos
comes again. A splinter cell in the crew agrees to vote someone out. Others
follow along because of peer-pressure. Often, that person isn’t the imposter.
We’ve voted out an innocent. Then we’re back in the spaceship, and the process
continues until the crewmates vote out the imposters, they complete their tasks,
or the imposter kills everyone.
So playing Among Us kind of feels like being one of Jesus’s disciples
at the last supper. Judas was definitely sus. That group dynamic of the secret
saboteur extends to frenemies in high school cliques and political teams like
Donald Trump’s administrations. When a senior official in Trump’s government
wrote an anonymous New York Times op-ed about the secret resistance in the
White House—Melania, totally sus.
Appendix
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Yet, in the game, group dysfunction stems less from the impostors’
sabotage and more from the frenzy of distrust and irrationality that emerges
when groups come under intense pressure to solve problems quickly. A healthy
group is defined by communication and collaboration. When problems external
to the group arise, it bands together to solve them. When the problem that arises
is internal to the group, however, as in Among Us, a team’s bonds can start to
fray. When that tension is aggravated by the pressure of a timeline to solve the
internal problem, the group can exhibit two possible responses. It can respond
with calm and reason, which then restarts the cycle of a healthy group—
collaboration and communication. Or it can respond with stress. When that
happens, emotion takes over from reason. People don’t know whom to trust.
They start yelling at each other. Some blindly follow the person who talks first.
Others follow the person who talks loudest. The group deteriorates into
dysfunction.
Students who have done group projects in school are familiar with the
dynamics that emerge in Among Us. There is usually one person who doesn't do
their work and sabotages the group. This saboteur is similar to the role of the
imposter in Among Us. On the other end of the group one person shoulders the
work that the imposter declines to do similar to the way a leader usually appears
in the crewmates in Among Us.
Even in writing our essay, we—a group of nine high-school students
who had to collaborate and communicate to write this piece—have seen Among
Us among us. Leadership roles were accumulated, while our work on this essay
was repeatedly derailed by Max’s attempts to get us to pay attention to his
geometry lessons. That’s not venting and killing people, but it is a form of
Appendix
338
sabotage to the group, and sometimes we devolved into chaos. While too much
stress can cause groups to fall apart, too little pressure can also cause a group to
deteriorate. The same holds for Among Us. When the crew is lazy and doesn’t
pay attention, the imposter wins easily.
Similarly, in team sports, the group must collaborate and communicate.
There’s no imposter, but the pressure to win can alter the team’s dynamics.
After loses, teammates can blame one another for mistakes, cause offense, and
get defensive. Cliques emerge within the team. Team spirit frays—like on the
2011 Red Sox where, after slipping from a two-game divisional lead over the
Yankees to third in the AL East, players started eating take-out chicken,
drinking beer, and playing video games during games (Hohler).
Politicians may also feel that their professions are like living through
Among Us. Amidst accusations of corruption and power abuse, ties to foreign
countries, harassment, and betrayal, politics is a game of trust. They argue based
on emotion, not reason. The difference is that, in politics, everyone’s an
imposter.
What Among Us reveals about how groups fall apart suggests some
“best practices” for keeping groups together:
1. To prevent isolation, create a space that fosters social interaction.
Innersloth found breakthrough success by offering community to
people in an age of isolation.
Appendix
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2. Create ways for people on the team to develop trust. Almost every
decision when playing Among Us comes down to the question, “Do I
trust this person?”
3. Get rid of a toxic person. Sometimes there really is a saboteur. They
may not be intentionally trying to destroy the group, but their actions
have the same effects as the imposters in Among Us. They cause
frenzy, create cliques, sew suspicion, and breed distrust among group
members.
4. Have a plan for when problems emerge. You can actually hack Among
Us pretty easily. Just pair up and then, if someone gets killed, there’s
always someone around to see it; if no one saw anything, then the dead
person’s partner is probably an impostor. But when the frenzy of
gameplay begins, it often becomes a free-for-all without any direction.
Make a plan for the team to solve the problem at hand, and stick to it.
5. Promote calm when pressure becomes intense. Pressure to solve a
problem becomes group disfunction in Among Us when the ticking
clock forces people to start making rash decisions born from emotion
rather than reason. Avoid an atmosphere of group panic by developing
strategies for responding to pressure with calm.
6. Don’t sneak through vents and kill other people in the group. It just
doesn’t promote good teamwork.
Appendix
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Works Cited
Anonymous. “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”
New York Times, 5 September 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-
anonymous-resistance.html.
Baranowski, Jordan. “The Untold Truth Of Among Us.” Looper, 7 January
2021, https://www.looper.com/308548/the-untold-truth-of-among-us/.
Bauer, Taylor. “The History of Among Us – 2020’s Surprise Hit.” Comic Years,
5 October 2020, https://comicyears.com/gaming/the-history-of-among-
us-2020s-surprise-hit/.
Epstein, Adam. “How an obscure 2018 computer game became a global
phenomenon overnight.” Quartz, 1 October 2020,
https://qz.com/1911718/how-among-us-became-a-global-video-game-
phenomenon/.
Farokhmanesh, Megan. “Among Us was 2020’s Most Downloaded Mobile
Game.” The Verge, 8 January 2021,
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221075/among-us-2020-most-
downloaded-mobile-game
Hohler, Bob. “Inside the collapse.” Boston Globe, 12 October 2011,
http://archive.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2011/10/12/re
d_sox_unity_dedication_dissolved_during_epic_late_season_collapse/.
Khan, Titus “TeeKay.” “The Quick Rise and Even Quicker Fall of Among Us—
What Really Happened?” Sportskeeda, 27 May 2021,
https://www.sportskeeda.com/among-us/the-quick-rise-even-quicker-
fall-among-us-what-really-happened.
Appendix
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Li, Li, Rongrong Chen, and Jing Chen. “Playing Action Video Games Improves
Visuomotor Control.” Psychological Science, vol. 27, no. 8, pp. 1092-
1108.
Matthews, Joe. “My Son’s Favorite Internet Game Replicates the Paranoia
Playing Out in California.” Zocalo Public Square, 6 April 2021,
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2021/04/06/among-us-game-
paranoia-california/ideas/connecting-california/
Osteen, KK. “‘Among Us’ proved to be the game we needed during the
pandemic.” The Washington Post Magazine, 9 March 2021,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-game-among-
us-proved-to-be-the-game-we-needed-during-the-
pandemic/2021/03/04/0addd71a-64cf-11eb-8c64-
9595888caa15_story.html
“Play and Curation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Interview with
Christopher Bensch, Andrew Borman, Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, and
Nicolas Ricketts.” American Journal of Play, vol, 13, no. 1, 2020, pp.
21-32,
https://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-
articles/13-1-Article-2-Play-and-Curation.pdf.
Robinson, Joel. “Affective Teamwork: A Comparative Study on the
Effectiveness of Emotional Interaction and Collaboration Between
Players in Cooperative Survival Games.” Association for Computing
Machinery, 2021,
https://joelrobinson.co.uk/files/Affective_Teamwork.pdf.
Appendix
342
Rodriguez, Salvador. “How Among Us, a social deduction game, became this
fall’s mega hit.” CNBC, 4 October 2020,
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/14/how-among-us-became-a-mega-hit-
thanks-to-amazon-twitch.html.
Sands, Sean. “‘Among Us’ Is Not Just the Game of 2020, It's ‘2020: The
Game’.” Vice, 23 September 2020,
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ep43yz/among-us-is-not-just-the-
game-of-2020-its-2020-the-game.
Shinkle, KY. “Is Among Us Still Popular?” ScreenRant, 28 July 2021,
https://screenrant.com/among-us-still-popular-steam-innersloth-player-
count/.
Winkie, Luke. “How Among Us Came Back From the Brink of Obscurity.”
IGN, 29, September 2020, https://www.ign.com/articles/how-among-
us-came-back-from-the-brink-of-obscurity.
343
2021 Collaborative Student Essay
How COVID Will Make Us Stronger
Twelve Students from Around the World on the Virus and the Future
COVID has been the worst: wearing masks, less time with friends, no
family for the holidays, isolation for older folks, extra social media silliness,
stinking Zoom, constant anxiety (“Should we be wearing masks?”), higher
stress, escalating mental health crises, less exercise, people unable to get
groceries, unable to go to school, second-rate remote learning, students falling
behind, closed national borders, people losing their jobs, people losing their
homes, a failed medical system, sickness, suffering, and hundreds of thousands
of deaths. Teenagers like us have been socially stunted: it’s a big emotional
developmental period in our lives, and we’re stuck at home. This much time
with your parents can’t be healthy for anyone. Yet we—the authors of this
article, a group of twelve teenagers from across the globe—as we look ahead to
the lives we shall lead, also recognize that, while the difficulties of the pandemic
have been real, COVID may be the kick in the ass our world needed to build a
better future.
Where others we have studied this summer have looked backward—at
how the disease affects the human body (Mukherjee), at how the US was
unprepared for COVID (Yong)—we are looking forward. To many the future
looks grim: COVID and its variants are unlikely to be completely suppressed
(Skegg et al.); online courses leech joy out of education (Rothman and
Feinberg); movie theaters may be a thing of the past (Morgan); and COVID will
accentuate the long-term concentration of poverty in countries that are middleincome,
fragile, and located in Africa, where governments had less fiscal space
Appendix
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for mitigating policy response measures (Kharas and Dooley). But we see a
brighter future on the horizon.
While COVID-19 has created a number of individual difficulties in the
past two years, it promises to create a number of long-term benefits to our
various social systems--specifically in medicine, culture, and education. The
mere existence of this essay—collaboratively written by students across the
globe taking a course together online—points to some of the ways COVID will
shape the future.
History shows several examples of events that, while extraordinarily
difficult to live through, led to beneficial social changes. Smallpox were not
spread in a large pandemic like COVID-19; instead, the disease continuously
plagued the world from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries. Estimates are that
smallpox killed 20-30 percent of the people infected (Gessler, p. 45). But
smallpox brought vaccines. Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine by
exposing his gardener's 9-year-old son to cowpox sores. Today, all vaccines are
based on the original vaccine for smallpox. Vaccines have saved over 936,000
children’s lives and over $1.9 trillion (Whitney, et al, p. 352). Through society's
battles against deadly diseases in the past, many illnesses were eradicated.
The Spanish flu and SARS outbreaks have shown that even the most
threatening diseases can cause positive change. SARS is a viral respiratory
disease caused by a SARS-associated coronavirus. It was first identified at the
end of February 2003 during an outbreak that emerged in China and spread to
four other countries (“CDC SARS Response Timeline”). SARS has many
similarities compared with COVID-19. They are both infectious diseases, and
they have similar symptoms. SARS brought China to pay more attention to
Appendix
345
medicine and the hospital system. That earlier experience might be why the
Chinese government can take strong policies to stop the spread the virus as soon
as possible.
Post-COVID, our world will become healthier thanks to an influx of
knowledge about disease—both from specialized researchers making medical
breakthroughs, and from increased public awareness. In Turkey—where Defne,
one of the authors of this paragraph, lives—funding for healthcare went up 32
percent from 2019 to 2020 (“TTB 2021”). Beyond healthcare, governments are
increasing investment in medical research. In the United States—where Henry,
the other author of this paragraph, lives—funding of the National Institute of
Health (NIH) would increase by 20% to $51 billion if President Biden’s budget
proposal was enacted. $6.5 billion would go to the creation the Advanced
Research Projects Agency for Health, which would develop “transformative
capabilities” in medicine (“FY22 Budget Request”). The NIH, along with
pharmaceutical companies, contributed a lot in the development of the
Coronavirus vaccines, along with other drugs. The power of those vaccines at
controlling the pandemic demonstrates how much public investment could
accelerate the invention of new drugs, and because of those results, more
funding is being given to that development.
Sissi, one of the authors of this paragraph, didn't take the epidemic
seriously when it started to spread in Wuhan, China. Only after dozens of people
started dying from the virus and she learned that it was highly contagious did
she realize the importance of the situation. She started wearing a mask wherever
she went and used hand sanitizer to protect herself from the virus. As we move
into the post-COVID era, the world will be more aware when it comes to more
Appendix
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common sicknesses, and how we deal with them in public. Pre-COVID, wearing
a mask in public was seen as taboo in many places in the world. People would
go to school and to work when sick. Going forward, it will be less taboo to wear
a mask when sick, and more people will take sick days. For Everett, another
author of this paragraph, 2020 was the first year he can remember during which
he didn’t catch a cold. The methods and campaigns for protecting human health
established by COVID-19 will make people more serious and effective when
facing health crises in the future.
Bringing us to think both locally and globally, COVID-19 will shift
what we value, whom we interact with, and how we speak to each other. We
used to take seeing our friends for granted: I’ll see him again tomorrow. But
many haven’t seen their loved ones for almost eighteen months. We have grown
apart from people we used to be close to. Now, thanks to the rollout of the
vaccine, many of us are starting to see our friends and family more often. When
we do, we are not taking time spent with them for granted anymore.
The use of digital and social media extraordinarily rose at the beginning
of Covid-19. Studies from the University of Zurich show that over 46% of
people increased their use of digital communication (Nguyen, p. 2). The most
common types of communication were messaging, voice calls, and social media.
Even though we have all learned how to navigate through the pandemic by
checking up on people we care about through our technology, there is still a
negative effect to this. Because of the increase in digital use, people may be
more inclined to stick to these habits after the pandemic ends. In an article for
BBC News, Rackham shines light on how different people are dealing with their
social anxiety post-covid. One person who was interviewed is named Maria
Appendix
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Badmus. She says she “was always uncomfortable and awkward and I feel like
it's going to be even worse.” This statement is what millions of people around
the world are also feeling (“Social Anxiety Disorder”). As Rackham points out,
psychotherapist Charley Gavigan says that the best way to handle this social
anxiety is to focus on the present as well as realizing that worrying is not going
to solve any problems. This advice may help many people, but it is still going to
be hard to get back into a normal non-mask wearing society after being at home
for over a year.
As a result of COVID-19, education will become more accessible—
available to more people in more ways, especially digitally. More than 290
million students could not go to school at one point, caused by the pandemic.
As a result, many schools started teaching children online. Technical devices
are needed to attend online classes; however, according to USA facts, about 4.4
million households do not have devices, and 3.7 million lack internet access,
only in the United States. Many more students do not have any access to online
learning worldwide. Many students were forced to take temporary absence from
school. Some students—like us—are lucky enough to be able to take online
classes, but sometimes the teaching sucks compared to face-to-face classes. The
pandemic popped these problems out into the open. In some areas, internet
became available, and apps that schools use for online classes were updated. It
is still difficult to say that students are learning as much as they normally do
when they are taught face-to-face. Most children are losing hope, feeling
uncomfortable with limitations to ask questions frequently, constant technical
problems, and not able to learn freely. It would be very important to increase
student’s motivation in order not to feel discouragement within learning.
Appendix
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Education is an important factor in ensuring kids have a successful
future, but that education isn’t worth much if students don’t have access to it.
The pandemic forced schools worldwide to shut down and find ways of teaching
remotely. This has allowed teachers to discover unconventional ways of
teaching, ways that are better than the previous in-person classes. Students can
now access courses across the globe from their own home. This means there is
no more financial travel cost and schools don’t have to provide housing and
meals. One of the best benefits has been recorded classes. If someone misses a
class, they don’t have to do hours of studying or just hope for the best to make
up the lost time. Lessons can be rewatched as many times as needed to get the
necessary information and to check notes. But the best development is less
discrimination against certain disabilities. Students with different learning
abilities can now have a calm environment without peers triggering them or
teachers targeting their struggles. Online courses do not make the issues vanish,
but they do allow students to find their own, comfortable time and space to
work.
Our article—and the course it grew from-–wouldn’t have existed if not
for the pandemic. The authors never would have met. Our course would have
been held on a physical campus. Most of us wouldn’t have been able to attend
because of travel restrictions or financial barriers. The pandemic pushed our
course online. Instead of meeting all together all of the time, we have a mix of
synchronous group meetings, asynchronous individual meetings with our
teacher, and self-directed work. The course is highly flexible and highly
adaptable. The materials are individualized, as are our meetings with our
teachers.
Appendix
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We have certainly felt the drawbacks of digital learning. Internet
connections fail. Students’ attention falters. We miss our friends. Physical
presence matters, as noted above. But we don’t miss the one-size-fits-all
classroom. And we value opportunities to meet new people from new places that
we will never visit in person—or maybe now we will.
All of us are in unique circumstances, yet COVID is one of the only
things that all of us, no matter where we come from, have experienced. Where
we used to have common ground with others from our hometowns, we now have
a shared experience with everyone in the world. Our class this summer is what
we can expect from the future of education—more global, more digital, more
individualized, more affordable, and more accessible.
Appendix
350
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Kharas, Homi, and Meagan Dooley. “Long-Run Impacts of COVID-19 on
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coronavirus-behave-inside-a-patient.
Nguyen, Minh Hao, et al. “Changes in Digital Communication During the
COVID-19 Global Pandemic: Implications for Digital Inequality and
Future Research.” Social Media and Society, online before print, 2020,
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120948255.
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Rackham, Annabel. “Covid: How to deal with social anxiety as restrictions
ease.” BBC, 17 May 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-
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Rothman, Julia, and Shaina Feinberg. “‘I’m teaching Into a Vacuum’: 14
Educators on Quarantine Learning.” New York Times, 21 May 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/coronavirus-
teachers.html.
Skegg, David, et al. “Future Scenarios for the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The
Lancet, 16 February 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-
6736(21)00424-4.
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Disease Control and Prevention: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
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Yong, Ed. “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” The Atlantic, 4 August
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“Writing” is usually understood as the expression of thought. This book redefines “writing” as the thought
process itself. Writing is not what you do with thought. Writing is thinking.
Better living through interpretation: that’s the promise of academic writing, which is a foundational course in
most schools because it’s a foundational skill in life. Our world is full of things that need to be questioned,
from ancient myths and historical events to current politics and the weird details of everyday life.
Based on his courses in the Writing Program at
Harvard University, Jeffrey R. Wilson’s
Academic Writing is a no-nonsense guide to the
long and complex writing process. Packed with
concrete examples, helpful visuals, and
practical tips, the book is an essential guide for
academic writing at the highest level.
Empowering writers to be creators—not just
consumers—of knowledge, Wilson shows how
to develop perspective, ask questions, build
ideas, and craft arguments that reveal new
truths that the world needs to hear. Writers
learn different strategies for articulating the
implications of an argument—why it matters—
and putting ideas in conversation with others
by finding, reading, and incorporating
scholarship. There are models for different
ways to organize an essay and tips to make
sentences snap with style. Emphasis is placed
on developing ideas in constant conversation
with others and on strengthening papers
through multiple rounds of revision.
Jeffrey R. Wilson is a teacher-scholar at Harvard
University. He is the author of three books: Richard III’s
Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare
and Disability History (2022), Shakespeare and Game of
Thrones (2021), and Shakespeare and Trump (2020). As
an Instructional Design Lead in the Office of the Vice
Provost for Advances in Learning, he creates courses and
events for Harvard Online. From 2014-22, he taught the
“Why Shakespeare?” course in the Harvard College
Writing Program. He has taught in the Departments of
English and Religious Studies at University of California,
Irvine; in the Department of Criminal Justice at California
State University, Long Beach; and in the Museum Studies
Program at the Harvard Extension School.
ACADEMIC WRITING