ESSAY 3 READINGS

ESSAY 3 READINGS:

• Readings for Essay 3

Essay 3’s Secondary Texts. Read all FOUR; pick THREE to write about. You will use each article as a critical lens to unpack, unfold, and understand 2 different proportions from Maggie Nelson’s Bluets:

• • Ted Gioia’s The Rise of the Fragmented Novel
  • Ben Segal – The Fragment as a Unit of Prose Composition
  • Maria Popova – Goethe on the Psychology of Color and Emotion – Brain Pickings
  • Lydia Davis’s “Les Bluets” = https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69935/les-bluets-1973(Links to an external site.)

Essay 3’s Tertiary Texts. Read all FOUR; pick ONE to write about. You will use each article as a critical lens to unpack, unfold, and understand 2 different proportions from Maggie Nelson’s Bluets:

• Rob Schlegel’s “Either Dissolve a Genre or Invent One – Book Review”
• Thomas Larson’s “TriQuarterly Now Where Was I – Craft Essay”
• Ray McDaniel’s “Constant Critic”
• Full Stop Interview – Pathos Nelson – PRINT PAGES 2 TO 4 ONLY

ESSAY 3 PROMPT:

• Essay 3 must be thesis-driven, well-organized, and eight-nine pages analysis of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.
• Essay 3 is NOT a book review NOR is it an informative summary. Theme/Thesis = must contain debatable argument; avoid summary and avoid obvious statements of facts.

Your thesis should: 

1. Select one: Does the content control the structure (new form: partially leans on preexisting forms)? Or does the structure control the content (new genre: full experimental).
2. Explore how Bluets queers (subverts/challenges) the traditional linear narrative arch to renegotiate the readership experience.

Your introduction paragraph should: 

1. Select one: Does the content control the structure (new form: partially leans on and blends preexisting genres)? -OR- Does the structure control the content (new genre: full experimental writing)?
2. How does your new genre -or- form creation affect or highlightBluets’  theme/thesis?

Your essay should: 

1. Analyze, explicate, and unpack 12-15 of Nelson’s numbered propositions. DO NOT analyze the entire text; there are a total of 240 numbered propositions. An analysisis (countable) decomposition into components in order to study (a complex thing, concept, theory); whereas, an explication is the act of opening, unfolding, or explaining; explanation; exposition; interpretation.
2. Evaluate the “Power Dynamic” of “text and readership”: What does it mean if readers are attracted to Nelson’s experimental style  =vs= what does it mean if readers long for the traditional linear narrative arch (problem, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution) because they’re unsettled (reject) by  Bluets’  new form and content?
3. 50% (4-5 body paragraph) of your essay is an analysis of Nelson’s theme and content.
4. 50% (4-5 body paragraph) of your essay is an analysis of Nelson’s form and structure. 

RUBRIC/RESOURCES:

• Sample MLA Formatted Essay with Guides.pdf
• Rubric for ALL Essays.pdf
• Dirty Dozen: Grammar + Mechanics: Review for All Essays

FORMAT:

• Your essay should follow proper MLA formatting, MLA in-text citations, and MLA Works Cited page. Use Times New Roman 12, double-spaced, 1 inch margins all around.
• Any essay turned in without appropriate citations will NOT receive a grade. 
• Keep turnitin.com “quoting matches” below 20%. “Quoting matches” above 30% WITHOUT a strong thesis statement = in danger of automatic fail.

NOTES:

• Use the present tense to analyze poetry.
• There are no narrators in poetry, only “speakers.”
• Avoid heavy reliance on passive voice, ambiguous language, vague language, cliches, and over-generalizations.
• Write in 3rd person pronoun only. Avoid using 1st person singular pronouns, 1st person collective pronouns, and second person pronouns. In other words, do not use “I, me, my, we, our, us, you, and your” pronouns.