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Brief description
(the phrases in bold are amplified below):
Choose three of the first six U.S. writers we have read. Describe and differentiate their strategies of appropriation vis-à-vis Cervantes’ text in a 3-5 page essay. Begin with some general consideration of questions of influence, appropriation, intertextuality, or whatever other term you wish to use for talking about how a novelist draws on an earlier work which has been widely read and discussed. Proceed to describe the strategies of appropriation of the three writers you have chosen, making sure to find at least one clear differentiating feature among them. Tryin some way in closing to account for the differences in approach you have encountered among the different writers. There is no obligation to use additional sources, but if you do, you must acknowledge them in a list of works cited, even if this only means a website you checked for additional information about the writer.
The first six U.S. writers
:
Tabitha Gilman Tenney, Female Quixotism
Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Hermann Melville, White Jacket and Moby Dick
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner, “The Old Man”
You do not have to read any more of any of these writers than I assigned for class to be able to attempt at least a speculative reconstruction of their strategies of appropriation of Don Quixote. If you do have familiarity with other relevant texts by any of them, you may certainly use them. You may refer to the two critical essays I have given you so far, on Melville and on Fitzgerald. I will also give you at least one other essay, by Montserrat Ginés, on Faulkner. Maybe also her chapter on Twain. You can read additional critical work or other secondary sources if you wish, but if you do you should cite them in your text, and include the reference in your list of works cited.
Brief description (the phrases in bold are amplified below):
Choose three of the first six U.S. writers we have read. Describe and differentiate their
strategies of appropriation
vis-à-vis Cervantes’ text in a 3-5 page essay. Begin with some general consideration of questions of influence, appropriation, intertextuality, or whatever other term you wish to use for talking about how a novelist draws on an earlier work which has been widely read and discussed. Proceed to describe the strategies of appropriation of the three writers you have chosen, making sure to find at least one clear differentiating feature among them.
Try in some way in closing to account for the differences in approach you have encountered among the different writers. There is no obligation to use additional sources, but if you do, you must acknowledge them in a list of works cited, even if this only means a website you checked for additional information about the writer.
The first six U.S. writers:
Tabitha Gilman Tenney, Female Quixotism
Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Hermann Melville, White Jacket and Moby Dick
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner, “The Old Man”
You do not have to read any more of any of these writers than I assigned for class to be able to attempt at least a speculative reconstruction of their strategies of appropriation of Don Quixote. If you do have familiarity with other relevant texts by any of them, you may certainly use them. You may refer to the two critical essays I have given you so far, on Melville and on Fitzgerald. I will also give you at least one other essay, by Montserrat Ginés, on Faulkner. Maybe also her chapter on Twain. You can read additional critical work or other secondary sources if you wish, but if you do you should cite them in your text, and include the reference in your list of works cited.
Strategies of appropriation
:
I have chosen this as a general term to refer to the way a later writer situates his/her work in relation to that of an earlier one. Of course, it implies self-conscious, deliberate choice(s), by means the writer on the receiving end shapes the elements s/he adopts, by a complex process of selecting, changing, and recombining. There are many aspects of this process that can be the focus of the analysis of such a strategy. One can emphasize what was kept, what was not, how what was borrowed has been transformed, how it has not, how it has been recombined with the newer writer’s own creation. One can give importance to the role of the reader, especially with reference to the degree to which appears the reader is expected to notice the relation to the earlier text. Any of the “elements” we brought out in the first assignment in this course can be seen as part of this strategy: style, tone, narrative technique, character, setting, theme, motif, etc.
For me, the term “strategy of appropriation” implies, above all, that the analysis strives to give a coherent pattern to the whole relationship between the two texts (and/or the two authors). Of course, this pattern implies that the appropriation is part of a larger strategy of communication with the reader’s active participation, of certain meanings. So in this way, hopefully, we begin to move beyond the mere cataloguing of borrowings as evidence of “influence,” towards an understanding of intertextuality as central to the way literary texts mean, and therefore, integral to any effort at interpretation.
Differentiating features:
While the strategies of appropriation you find in these texts may have certain features in common (such as the relative youth of the quixotic figures, as compared with Cervantes’ original), there will also be definite differences between and among them. Try to find one or more differences that make it possible to place the three strategies in a clearly contrastive relation with one another. In other words, try to give a high profile to an aspect that makes it possible to clearly differentiate these as three distinct strategies, such that where one author makes a certain strategic choice, another author makes, in some sense, the opposite choice. Ideally, two differentiating features could serve to work out a systematic set of contrasts between the three: if you had, say, feature X vs. not-X and feature Y vs. not-Y, you would end up with four possibilities, X-Y, X-not Y, not X-Y, and not X-not Y. Three of the four would be manifested in the writers under consideration. (Obviously, the features might not simply come down to presence vs. absence, there could be variations. But I have expressed it this way in order to offer a simple model.)
3-5 page essay:
Just to remind you that it should be well-written in standard English, with a well-organized, coherent argument, and supported by convincing, well-chosen examples from the texts. Do not forget Cervantes! This is about how these writers appropriated Don Quixote, but that means we are still engaging Cervantes’ text, too, in order to understand the original material that is being incorporated.
