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Article Analysis
For your article analysis, you must choose a critical article from the GMC library databases that
makes a clear argument about the reading you’ve chosen for
your research paper.
The article
you choose must provide more than basic biographical information and plot summary. Your
analysis should be at least 500 words in length.
GMC library password
SUM2013gmc
Your article analysis will be graded on the following rubric:
Argument
70 points
MLA Style
10 points
Mechanics, Grammar, and Punctuation
10 points
Structure
10 points
Argument
In your analysis, you should clearly identify the author’s thesis and main points. You
should then provide a critique of these main points and the overall thesis.
While you’re writing, you may want to think about the following:
1. How could the author have made his/her argument stronger?
2. What are the weak points in the argument? What are the strong points?
3. Do you agree or disagree with the author’s conclusions?
You should support your critique with information from the reading you’ve chosen for
your research paper.MLA Style
Your paper must be formatted according to MLA format.
You must include a works-cited page at the end of your paper.
You must include in-text citations within the body of your paper.
For more information about MLA style, you should view the Purdue OWL’s pages on
MLA: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/.
Mechanics, Grammar, and Punctuation
All written assignments should be mechanically and grammatically correct with proper
punctuation.
For more information on each of these, you should view the Purdue OWL’s General
Writing Resources page: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/.
Structure
The introduction should include a clear thesis statement. It should also clearly identify
the title of the article you’ve chosen and the author’s name.
Each body paragraph should have a clear topic sentence that relates back to the thesis.
The information in each paragraph should relate to the topic sentence. In the body
paragraphs, you may want to focus on individual points made by the author.
Before you begin writing, I recommend that you write an outline to organize your ideas.
Doing this will help you write a logical, well-organized essay.
The South Central Modern Language Association
Niccolò Machiavelli by Silvia Ruffo-Fiore
Review by: Paul G. Reeve
The South Central Bulletin, Vol. 43, No. 4, Studies by Members of SCMLA (Winter, 1983), pp.
132-133
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern Language
Association
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132 THE SOUTH CENTRAL BULLETIN Winter, 1983
BOOK REVIEWS
Continued
complicated relationships. Thus, the Comus entertainment
in September of 1634, Hunter tells us, is “somehow a
response” to the scandalous events which led to
Castlehaven’s execution in 1631 and left a cloud over the
marriage-linked Spencers and Egertons. In creating this
“family piece” as a response to family commission, Milton
dramatized the Augustinian notion that “true chastity was
a mental condition that could not be altered by physical
assault,” but he may have responded “too enthusiastically,”
Hunter suggests, because three passages stressing chastity
are omitted from the Bridgewater manuscript and thus in
all probability from the 1634 performance.
Hunter’s “tentative promptbook” is based primarily on
the 1637 first edition with differences from the Bridgewater
manuscript indicated in footnotes; and he maintains that
Milton had a Ludlow performance in mind as he composed
the work. Hence Comus was not written as “a piece ofpoetry”
that Henry Lawes might freely adapt to the Ludlow scene.
Since Hunter contends that the performance occurred in the
inner bailey and not in the Great Hall, traditionally
accepted as the site, his stage directions address the outdoor
scene of the castle bailey. The most surprising change in
Hunter’s promptbook is an opening song by the “Daemon”
that is extracted from the play’s epilogue. In light of
Hunter’s research, his promptbook entices production.
In an appendix Hunter offers additional evidence that
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written to
celebrate the wedding of Elizabeth Carey to Thomas
Berkeley. Even though his evidence is convincing, the
reader may wonder why Hunter appended this article to his
brief Comus study. Its brevity notwithstanding, this
carefully researched book offers valuable insight.
Albert W. Fields
University of Southwestern Louisiana
J. R. LeMaster, FirstPerson, Second (poems). Madras, India:
The Poet & Tagore Institute of Creative Writing
International, n. d. 55 pp. $5.00.
All of us, individually and culturally, wear masques –
those we create for ourselves and those created for us. When
we look at ourselves we see both the masque of I and the
masque of you, something like staring into a mirror and
recognizing the reversed image somewhat distorted by the
thickness of the glass. In addition, all relationships share a
common masque of the particular bonds formed – especially
the sum total of all human relationships.
J. R. LeMaster’s new collection of poetry, First Person,
Second, in three parts (“The Soul as Pretender’,” “The World
as We Have Made It,” and “Things as They Should Be”)
expertly examines the universal masque (man and his world
as they view each other) on both a physical and spiritual
basis. The result is a discovery oftheIandyou of selfand the I
and you collectively – the mirror and the real, the reflection
and the reflected.
When the masque is lifted, as this poet does, we get a
deeper understanding of the very face that molds the skin,
and when the light shines through, the skin itself. LeMaster
lifts the skin and sometimes finds the real in the face and
sometimes in the space beyond the mirror’s glass. First he
says, “I will throw open / the gates of the poem” (in “Only the
Tiger”); he continues this development in “Flesh Only,” and
“Manner.”
It is suggested that the ultimate human conquest, the
search for the “unknown shadows” (in “Manner”), would be
to hang the self canvas in such a way that the light would
shine through the masque and the man, the shadow and the
man, as one – the painting as the painter. The echo, of
course,is to W. B. Yeats (“How can we know the dancer from
the dance?”). LeMaster adds another dimension to the
concept- in particular, that the real is neither the dancer nor
the dance but both combined with the light and dark which
create them, as in “The Clown Who Dances Sprightly” and
“The Bushes at Stonehenge.”
Two other forms of the masque need to be mentioned – the
masque that is life and the one that is death, the light and the
dark. Neither, according to LeMaster, is quite the way we see
them, as he points out in “All Day They Called” and “Our
Words Flow.” “Death,” he says, “is not a lover’s dream….
Death … is perfect love” (“All Day They Called”).
First Person, Second is a major work by a very gifted poet.
It opens new vistas, word by word, line by line, to areas with
which we need to concern ourselves. One hardly need
mention LeMaster’s technical accuracy; he has long been a
craftsman who refused to settle for less than perfection in his
work.
Lee Pennington
University of Kentucky
Jefferson Community College
Silvia Ruffo-Fiore, Niccol6 Machiavelli. Twayne’s World
Authors Series, No. 656. Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1982. x + 179 pp. $14.95
Machiavelli was a Renaissance man, not only
chronologically, but also in the scope of his accomplishment.
He was a scholar and a man of action, a philosopher and a
diplomat, a poet and a politician. Silvia Ruffo-Fiore has set
for herself the forbidding task of presenting a critical
overview of Machiavelli’s life and work in a mere 144 page of
text. Ruffo-Fiore describes her approach in the “Preface”:
“This critical overview surveys [Michiavelli’s] writings,
particularly stressing their literary qualities, in order to
adjust popular, stereotyped views and to make his works
more clearly understood and appreciated” (p. vii).
This is quite an ambitious program, and yet it does narrow
the focus a bit. Ruffo-Fiore’s emphasis on the “literary and
rhetorical dimensions” (p. vii) of Machiavelli’s work gives
her a handle on this imposing body ofmaterial. It also results
in some interesting insights, such as her analysis of “The
New Prince as a Mythic Hero” (pp. 34-37). In this
subchapter, Ruffo-Fiore points out that the enduring
interest in Machiavelli’s The Prince is due in large measure
to “Machiavelli’s portrayal of the new Prince, which blends
the qualities of the historical, literary, and mythic
definitions of hero” (p. 34).
What sometimes seems missing in this literary and
rhetorical approach is a sense of Machiavelli’s intellectual
milieu. Of Machiavelli, C. S. Lewis observed, “The
Elizabethans, I believe, understood him much better than
the subtle moderns.” The Elizabethans understood that
Machiavelli represented a challenge that put their world at
risk. The moderns, subtle or not, live in a world where
Machiavelli’s vision of the secular state prevails. It is,
therefore, difficult at this late date to grasp exactly what all
the furor was about- why Machiavelli was so widely reviled,
why his name became a synonym for perfidy, why he became
identified with Satan himself, “old Nick.”
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Winter, 1983 THE SOUTH CENTRAL BULLETIN 133
Machiavelli, like Galileo a century later, represented a
threat to established authority. Each of these innovators
shucked off the metaphysical trappings of his science and
relied wholly on empirical evidence. It was not merely his
recommendation in The Prince of perfidious and cruel
political behavior that earned Machiavelli his name, but his
complete disregard of the metaphysical foundations of
political authority.
As Lord Acton said, “The authentic interpreter of
Machiavelli is the whole course of later history.” In choosing
to focus on the literary and rhetorical dimensions of
Machiavelli’s work, Ruffo-Fiore has hit upon a topic that the
course of history has been relatively silent on. Machiavelli
has been interpreted and re-interpreted for each epoch, and
this history is sketched by Ruffo-Fiore in her concluding
chapter, “The Legacy of Machiavelli.” But interpretation
has been confined largely to the character of the man and of
his thought. Even in the consideration of his literary and
dramatic works, Ruffo-Fiore comments, “thoroughgoing
analysis of his dramatic techniques, symbols, themes,
language, and imagery has taken second place to the power
of his ideological vision” (p. 111). Ruffo-Fiore’s approach to
Machiavelli’s works is a worthwhile undertaking well
executed, and while the scope of the book is necessarily
limited, the “Selected Bibliography” provides a guide for
further reading.
Paul G. Reeve
Vanderbilt University
William E. Tanner and J. Dean Bishop, ed., Rhetoric and
Change. Mesquite, Texas: Ide House, Inc., 1982. iv +
217 pp. $15.95 (cloth), $10.95 (paper).
Readers familiar with the annual symposia in rhetoric
(1974-80) sponsored by the Federation of North Texas Area
Universities and the Department of English of Texas
Woman’s University will surely welcome this collection of
thirteen essays, many of which are drawn from the
symposia. The editors not only arrange them effectively, but
also offer as an introduction (Part One) an overview of
directions and insights in rhetorical study over the past
several decades. In this lead essay, “Reform Amid the
Revival of Rhetoric,” Tanner and Bishop establish the frame
ofthe anthology and provide useful touchstones for students
of rhetoric from Adams Sherman Hill’s The Principles of
Rhetoric (1895) to Janice M. Lauer’s (and others) Four
Worlds of Writing (1981).
The essays themselves (Part Two through Five) address
both pedagogical and theoretical issues, ranging from the
study of literary uses of rhetoric to the role of rhetoric in
problem-solving, creative writing, and composition. Part
Two, “Voices of Change,” contains two essays: Edward P. J.
Corbett’s “Rhetoric, Whether Goest Thou?” and Winston
Weathers’ “The Value of Rhetoric to the Creative Artist.”
Corbett’s essay, a diagnostician’s estimate of the “health” of
rhetoric, paints a guarded but optimistic picture of the state
of rhetoric and the potential for rhetorical study in a society
dominated by visual media. For Winston Weathers, a
veteran contributor of rhetorical studies and creative work,
the discipline of rhetoric is a necessary prelude for young
writers to creative activity. “By refusing to recognize
rhetoric as a legitimate part of artistry,” Weathers argues,
“the creator handicaps himself and, alas, comprises the very
role of art in our society” (pp. 32-33).
Part Three, “Aristotle Astray,” offers three essays on the
limits of traditional rhetorical theory. The first of these,
Jacques Barzun’s “The Rhetoric of the Arts,” challenges
many recent “schools” of criticism based on what Barzun
calls “misplaced abstraction,” a flaw which leads critics to
reduce art to a set of principles, archetypes, or symbols that
ultimately ignore both artifact and artist. The effect of such
extreme reductivism, Barzun contends, is that art become
governed by a sort of “mechanical determinism.” Wilbur
Samuel Howell, in his essay “Peter Ramus, Thomas
Sheridan, and Kenneth Burke: Three Mavericks in the
History of Rhetoric,” provides a brief description of
Aristotle’s Rhetoric and an analysis of the ways in which
Ramus, Sheridan, and Burke have departed from it.
Kenneth Burke himself, in his “Motion, Action, and the
Human Condition,” explores the nature of action (language)
and its relationship to motion (matter), as well as symbolic
action (roughly, non-literal language) as an extension of
motion.
Parts Four and Five, “From Intention to Invention” and
“Squiggles on a Moebius Strip,” respectively, include
several essays on literature as well as pedagogical and
theoretical pieces. The range of authors and titles indicates
the variety: Martin Steinmann, Jr., “Speech Acts and
Rhetoric”; Frank J. D’Angelo, “Up Against the Wall,
Mother! The Rhetoric of Slogans, Catchphrases, and
Graffiti”; Richard L. Larson, “The Rhetoric of the Written
Voice”; Richard E. Young, “Methodizing Nature: The
Tagmemic Discovery Procedure”; W. Ross Winterowd, “The
Three R’s: Reading, Reading, and Rhetoric”; Gerald J.
Prince, “Questions, Answers, and Narrative Legibility: A
Structuralist Heuristic”; Kay Parkhurst Easson,
“‘Description as Cosmos’; Blake’s settings in Milton”; and
Thomas O. Sloan, “Beauty’s Spouse’s Odd Elysium: Barth’s
Funhouse.”
That the editors have had such a broad range oftopics and
authors from which to choose indicates two things: first, the
eclectic nature of contemporary rhetorical investigation;
and second, the quality of the interest and participation in
the symposia in rhetoric for which they were largely
responsible.
Douglas M. Catron
Iowa State University
Ron Thomas, The Latin Masks ofEzra Pound. Studies in
Modern Literature, No. 4. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI
Press, 1983. xvi + 180 pp. $34.95.
Not long after his termination as a teacher at Wabash
College in 1908 (he sheltered a chorus girl), Ezra Pound
headed for Europe. It was, he thought, goodbye desert and
hello oasis. If oasis proved mirage, Ron Thomas indicates in
The Latin Masks of Ezra Pound, it was due in no small
measure to a pair of world wars ( = History), the first of
which soured Pound on England and her Establishment,
and the second of which ended his prospect of becoming
Italy’s (and fascist Mussolini’s) modern epic poet.
Between 1908 and 1917 Ezra Pound, Idaho’s poet,
“Halley’s comet,” sought poetic identity through the Latin
Masks (personae) of Catullus as lyric/satiric and Propertius
as dramatic/erotic. After 1917, Pound switched to the Ovid of
the Metamorphoses as his model in a long series of poems
designated as The Cantos. Fired by ambition to rival Virgil,
author ofan epic which appeared to have established a polity
(the Roman imperium), Pound used Ovid as a resource for
his personal poetic program: to oppose Hellenism (the
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- Article Contents
- Issue Table of Contents
p. 132
p. 133
The South Central Bulletin, Vol. 43, No. 4, Studies by Members of SCMLA (Winter, 1983), pp. 90-135
Front Matter [pp. 90-91]
“Jiu-Jitsu” in Lawrence’s “Gladiatorial” [pp. 92-94]
A Catalogue of Suffering in the Works of Dostoevsky: His Christian Foundation [pp. 94-99]
The Interpolated Tale in Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene,” Book I [pp. 99-104]
Buzzati’s Poetic Solitude [pp. 105-106]
Casualties of Patriarchal Double Standards: Old Women in Yehoshua’s Fiction [pp. 107-109]
Difficulties in the Interpretation of John Donne’s “Satyre 1” [pp. 109-111]
Love’s Wealth in “The Sunne Rising” [pp. 112-114]
Pushkin and Mussorgsky: Contrasting Views of Tsar Boris [pp. 115-117]
The Quest for Recognition over Reason: Charles Bon’s Death-Journey into Mississippi [pp. 117-120]
Hotspur’s Poor Memory [pp. 121-123]
The Dialectally Restricted Use of the Personal Infinitive in Italian [pp. 124-125]
Owl Eyes, Stoddard’s Lectures, and “The Great Gatsby” [pp. 125-127]
Speaking, Reflecting, Writing: The Myth of Narcissus and Echo [pp. 127-129]
Book Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 130]
Review: untitled [pp. 130-131]
Review: untitled [pp. 131]
Review: untitled [pp. 131-132]
Review: untitled [pp. 132]
Review: untitled [pp. 132-133]
Review: untitled [pp. 133]
Review: untitled [pp. 133-134]
Review: untitled [pp. 134]
Review: untitled [pp. 134-135]
Editor’s Reflections [pp. 135]
Back Matter
