4.1 Short essays!

If you haven't sent me a copy of your long essay as an attachment already = please do so.  Send it to the ENG4017 account.

Short essay assignment: The assignment sheet is posted to the right.  We did a quick check through of some of the different forms you might choose for your short essay by reading through the work listed on the calender.  We noted that these pieces are built quite differently: as lists, as video with voice over, as essays, as a kind of chronicle (lists of experiences by date). and so on.  Hopefully the criteria on the assignment sheet will give you some guidance regardless of the form you choose.

We spent the next section of class looking in some detail at a couple of short works that are written more or less using traditional CNF essay forms.  We noted how economic the essays were, in that the left out lots of information that surrounds the story = so as to focus deeply on the heart of the experience.  We noticed that one result of this economy of language was a kind of indirection, which engaged the reader in creating the essays meaning (because the explanations were not stated directly).

Indirection = what writers choos to say and choose not to say.  We did a close reading of Accident, and Fallout as examples of how authors draw their readers in to their stories through presenting  their story within its context and articulating its focus through references which the reader then needs to interpret.  For example, Accident does not state where the story takes place = but we noticed plenty of clues.  We must infer the larger political conflict which surround the very human story at the center of this essay. It is as if by leaving out any direct statement of the anger and bitterness between the two sides, the story evades justification or partisanship and focuses on the experience of the young narrator, who needs makes sense of his feelings first in terms of his physical perspective = what he saw and how he responded to it as a physical being; and then in terms of his cultural identity, where he felt the need to re-construct his feelings to match his family allegiances.  Again, in fallout, the consequences of the Cold War are present => its fallout, but not the details of its cause.

You spent the last part of class thinking about what form you would like to use for your short draft, and drafting some ideas/writing.

For next week:
Blog 8: Post short essay 1
Read: at least 12 of the pieces in the current issue of Brevity