add “husband”? or subtract “wife”? or cut “brother” (as only male reference)

add ref to autobiog

semicolon

italics

cut

major typo: s/b “…MIDWIFE of…”

caps

awk

recast

title not needed also: when possible combine/lighten references here for readability

italics

“to”

awk

awk

awk

Hi copy editor! Many thanks!

I’ve done very minimal editing on the Word files, with the exception of bibliographies, which I cleaned up significantly.

I think it would make the most sense for us to focus on readability. Feel free just to highlight sentences and deem them “awkward”—I’m happy to make the changes myself—or of course feel free to go further; I’ll happily make whatever substantive edits you propose. Consider breaking up paragraphs, since paragraph breaks are one of the things that easily get lost in transfer from Word. And of course whatever else you see….the only thing I’ll say is that in my opinion it’s not worth our eyesight to spend much time looking at those Works Cited lists; a couple are, well, REALLY long.

Hi copy editor! Many thanks!

I’ve done very minimal editing on the Word files, with the exception of bibliographies, which I cleaned up significantly.

I think it would make the most sense for us to focus on readability. Feel free just to highlight sentences and deem them “awkward”—I’m happy to make the changes myself—or of course feel free to go further; I’ll happily make whatever substantive edits you propose. Consider breaking up paragraphs, since paragraph breaks are one of the things that easily get lost in transfer from Word. And of course whatever else you see….the only thing I’ll say is that in my opinion it’s not worth our eyesight to spend much time looking at those Works Cited lists; a couple are, well, REALLY long.

Hi copy editor! Many thanks!

I’ve done very minimal editing on the Word files, with the exception of bibliographies, which I cleaned up significantly.

I think it would make the most sense for us to focus on readability. Feel free just to highlight sentences and deem them “awkward”—I’m happy to make the changes myself—or of course feel free to go further; I’ll happily make whatever substantive edits you propose. Consider breaking up paragraphs, since paragraph breaks are one of the things that easily get lost in transfer from Word. And of course whatever else you see….the only thing I’ll say is that in my opinion it’s not worth our eyesight to spend much time looking at those Works Cited lists; a couple are, well, REALLY long.

Hi copy editor! Many thanks!

I’ve done very minimal editing on the Word files, with the exception of bibliographies, which I cleaned up significantly.

I think it would make the most sense for us to focus on readability. Feel free just to highlight sentences and deem them “awkward”—I’m happy to make the changes myself—or of course feel free to go further; I’ll happily make whatever substantive edits you propose. Consider breaking up paragraphs, since paragraph breaks are one of the things that easily get lost in transfer from Word. And of course whatever else you see….the only thing I’ll say is that in my opinion it’s not worth our eyesight to spend much time looking at those Works Cited lists; a couple are, well, REALLY long.

Hi copy editor! Many thanks!

I’ve done very minimal editing on the Word files, with the exception of bibliographies, which I cleaned up significantly.

I think it would make the most sense for us to focus on readability. Feel free just to highlight sentences and deem them “awkward”—I’m happy to make the changes myself—or of course feel free to go further; I’ll happily make whatever substantive edits you propose. Consider breaking up paragraphs, since paragraph breaks are one of the things that easily get lost in transfer from Word. And of course whatever else you see….the only thing I’ll say is that in my opinion it’s not worth our eyesight to spend much time looking at those Works Cited lists; a couple are, well, REALLY long.

Hi copy editor! Many thanks!

I’ve done very minimal editing on the Word files, with the exception of bibliographies, which I cleaned up significantly.

I think it would make the most sense for us to focus on readability. Feel free just to highlight sentences and deem them “awkward”—I’m happy to make the changes myself—or of course feel free to go further; I’ll happily make whatever substantive edits you propose. Consider breaking up paragraphs, since paragraph breaks are one of the things that easily get lost in transfer from Word. And of course whatever else you see….the only thing I’ll say is that in my opinion it’s not worth our eyesight to spend much time looking at those Works Cited lists; a couple are, well, REALLY long.

Check the page note for instructions!

I'll use "Page Notes" for introductions and annotation guidelines. In this case, the notes on the second page handle the introduction perfectly well, so I'll jump right to guidelines for breakout group live annotation:

1) Take a few minutes and read the poem to yourself, at the pace you'd read out loud.

2) You may already have your own personal answer to the question "What is the reaper singing about?" Discuss that question for 5 minutes: try to reach a consensus!

3) Have one group member post your answer, along with a summary of your evidence, as a reply to this page note.

Use the bottom button arrow and set it to "Post to Only Me" I'll then ask you all to flip that switch and post in our "page2stage2020" group where everyone can see it.

Folks, please use the “REBEL MUSIC 2020” group for all annotations (pull down menu under “Public” at top left)—thanks!

please set your browser to “Rebel Music 2020” in the menu below “Public” and annotate there!

Not so fast, my learned friend!

So much for the EU as a democratic body....

I come from the future . . . bearing good news!

if you're in here, you're in the wrong place: remember the "Rebel Music 1213" group!

Remember, use the "Rebel Music 1213" group (via top left pull-down menu under "Public": once you switch your setting, you can stay in that group for the remainder of the class!

Greetings 1213 annotators!

If you haven't already joined the "Rebel Music 1213" group, please do so:

click the link!

Once you're in, the bar at the top left will show you which group your annotations are going in: set it to "Rebel Music 1213" and you can forget about it for the rest of the course!

Greetings 1213 annotators!

If you haven't already joined the "Rebel Music 1213" group, please do so:

click the link!

Once you're in, the bar at the top left will show you which group your annotations are going in: set it to "Rebel Music 1213" and you can forget about it for the rest of the course!

Greetings 1213 annotators!

If you haven't already joined the "Rebel Music 1213" group, please do so:

click the link!

Once you're in, the bar at the top left will show you which group your annotations are going in: set it to "Rebel Music 1213" and you can forget about it for the rest of the course!

hey, folks--when you annotate, remember to flip the switch at top left from "Public" to "Rebel Music 1213"!

Greetings 1213 annotators!

If you haven't already joined the "Rebel Music 1213" group, please do so:

link!

Once you're in, the bar at the top left will show you which group your annotations are going in: set it to "Rebel Music 1213" and you can forget about it for the rest of the course!

Greetings 1213 annotators!

If you haven't already joined the "Rebel Music 1213" group, please do so:

click the link!

Once you're in, the bar at the top left will show you which group your annotations are going in: set it to "Rebel Music 1213" and you can forget about it for the rest of the course!

I am introducing each text in this section with a brief "Page Note": if you've been making annotations, and want feedback ASAP, please reply to this note! (This will trigger an email notification.)

I am introducing each text in this section with a brief "Page Note": if you've been making annotations, and want feedback ASAP, please reply to this note! (This will trigger an email notification.)

I am introducing each text in this section with a brief "Page Note": if you've been making annotations, and want feedback ASAP, please reply to this note! (This will trigger an email notification.)

I am introducing each text in this section with a brief "Page Note": if you've been making annotations, and want feedback ASAP, please reply to this note! (This will trigger an email notification.)

I am introducing each text in this section with a brief "Page Note": if you've been making annotations, and want feedback ASAP, please reply to this note! (This will trigger an email notification.)

I am introducing each text in this section with a brief "Page Note": if you've been making annotations, and want feedback ASAP, please reply to this note! (This will trigger an email notification.)

Here Allen offers her definition of democracy.

Whoa!

Of course "philosophy" might sound more difficult than history! But Allen believes that it is a more accessible way of teaching a text: is she persuasive on this point?

Allen, in effect, defines "democracy" as loving these two things, these two concepts / experiences....

A question that's been broached in class....

Allen's book, from 2014, is a remarkable project. For our purposes, it will serve both as an argumentative text and as a text that offers ideas about reading and writing. The book, that is, is both an instance of and an argument for what Allen calls democratic reading & writing....

We are only reading selections from the book, enough to provide a little background on the text of the Declaration and a few examples of Allen's reading methods.

Since no one has begun annotating yet, I will give you free rein for the time being. Ask Allen questions; argue with Allen; point out where you see her addressing her readers and engaging in meta commentary in helpful ways...

EDIT: A physical copy of Allen's book is now on reserve at the main desk of Bizzell Library

should read "the Monday after SPRING BREAK"!

Your chosen group="target"; Marshall="tool"

(the Constitution!)

I've linked to the entire book in the OU library (at the bottom of our readings page): here's the key sentence from that Appendix:

Madison was making the common distinction that political scientists and others would later differentiate as “direct democracy” and “representative democracy.”"

Here's a classic argument structure: provocative question in the title, which, typically, the text intends to answer.

(I say "typically" because one can imagine an argument structure where the author instead seeks to show the reader that the question is ultimately the wrong kind of question to ask, or presents the question as being "cited": as the kind of thing people ask.)

Dahl's book, though, is very earnest about the question, and his first chapter presents a clear answer...

Reminder: The entire Dahl book is available as an e-book in Bizzell's holdings; I've linked to it in the unit 2 links, available at the bottom of the readings page...

Dahl's invocation of a hypothetical citizen allows us to compare his authorial strategies to those of Allen...

If Allen had been a computer/video game nerd, she might have made a joke here, by referring to these "most selective universities" as "l337 institutions"

The summary in the first few pages here will help you greatly, esp. in putting Allen's own project in relationship with other texts/ideas...

This is a claim about equality--one that I think has a quite complicated relationship to Marshall's 3-part breakdown (civil/political/social)

I think that there are other possible valid answers to Allen's question as well; but she means "the answer for this book"...

A large jump here: I wanted to give you some flavor of how Allen deals with language other than that most famous/most fully discussed section of the Declaration: the "submission" of "facts"

Again, note how close reading starts in something very similar to ordinary common sense & generosity...

"No duh!"

Seriously: this sentence signals the beginning of a philosophical move: the attempt to refine, add precision to, an everyday understanding.

Here I might list the "sound bites" that circulated during the most recent Presidential election. Instead, I'll simply link to a word cloud, courtesy of Gallup:

Notice how Allen makes an argument by "close reading" that might be made in other kinds of ways...

An "echo" is a kind of allusion (remember my discussion of different kinds of citation on the 2nd "Elements" handout?) What Allen has to say about echo in this chapter provides an excellent example of the potential large stakes of seemingly small details...

This is an exceptionally "teacherly" chapter of Allen's book. It may not immediately seem relevant to the argument about equality, but by the chapter's end you should see connections...

Here is a question for anyone: can you describe an example of a piece of "group writing" you have been involved with?

General note: this upload of the Allen document now seems to be functioning correctly on all pages. I will test this by making comments in several locations.....

One of the most famous scenes of writing in American history turns out to feature a process that is constantly emphasized by writing teachers more than 200 years later....

Note the particular publication date of the piece: it appeared between the House approval (1970) and the Senate approval (1972) of the ERA, and was cited by those on both sides of the debate.

The "Introduction" (872-886) is required for everyone; parts II and III A. should be read by those of you who are considering writing your 2nd paper on the ERA cluster of texts.

For further historical context, see the Alice Paul Institute's ERA website

Our selections from Danielle Allen's book include a a text of the Declaration: note the differently punctuated version of this crucial, lengthy sentence in Allen. On the history of that punctuation, see Allen (& compare the image of the Declaration, from the first printed version, the "Dunlap broadside", that I've used as the main image for our Unit 2 page.)

Edit: I've now switched our Unit 2 page to display a high-res image of a more recent discovery, the "Sussex Declaration".

A "simple question" that turns out not to be so simple....

The first sentence, of the first chapter, of Allen's book.

A question: What can you say about this sentence in terms of the "Elements of the Essay"?

I have stopped my annotations with this section....

A claim based on 19th-century consensus, shifting from the language of civil rights to the language of social rights--here the distinction between individual and society is crucial...

I wanted to annotate this entire paragraph, considering when and where we all are reading. But I'll just point out this sentence: notice how it is not descriptive ("is") but normative ("should"). What are the consequences of this way of thinking about it?

An important analysis here: Marshall will go on to show how this distinction plays itself out in other areas...

Another metaphor: now, the common one of warfare. (Perhaps so common that we take it for granted as readers....yes?)

An important clarification/elaboration

If you were road-mapping this paragraph, you'd have an interesting task. Remember our handout: his entire paragraph provides what?

Here is a sentence with rich implications: can we anticipate why Marshall thinks this treatment "appropriate"?

The first Reform Act--here briefly summarized on the Victorian Web

Note Marshall's working metaphor, "rights=people."

Civil rights were already full grown in 1832, when political rights first began to toddle...

Marshall summarizes a long historical process

Much historical material available for annotation in the remainder of this paragraph

I'll cite a historian and archivist's blog on settlement and removal

Marshall returns to his 3-part breakdown, now linking each aspect of citizenship to a different historical period where the rights linked to that aspect emerged.

Translation: "Citizenship has three parts."

Our selection begins here!

[I will use the last word of the paragraph to provide what I'm calling a "roadmap sentence"]

In this paragraph, Marshall introduces a 3-part breakdown of citizenship that he says is backed by logic and especially by history.

The remainder of this section, 48-74), iis optional! (The rest of this section gets deeper into the details of post-WWII British policy than we need to get.)

I am asking you to read sections 2 and 3 of Marshall's essay, and the first two pages of section 4 (pp. 10-48)--an essay that has since become a classic. (The remainder of the essay focuses more narrowly on the details of post-war British social policy than is necessary for our purposes...)

In his 1950 introduction, Marshall writes that the essay was based on two lectures from 1949 "designed for a mixed audience, mainly of undergraduates."

The Britannica' provides further useful context for the essay.

Marshall’s most influential work, the essay Citizenship and Social Class, was originally delivered as the Alfred Marshall Lectures in Cambridge in 1949, only a few years after the Labour government had implemented the economist William Beveridge’s wartime plans for universal social insurance. Marshall claimed that citizenship in Britain was originally bestowed on members of high-status social groups as a single package of civil, political, and social privileges. He argued that, as capitalism and the modern state emerged, a new egalitarian and legally defined form of community membership began to take shape. That new kind of citizenship slowly pulled apart the package of privileges hitherto enjoyed exclusively by the well born.

(The founder of the lecture series, Alfred Marshall, shares a name with TH Marshall....)

This is what you'll get from me after our conference meeting!

[I will use the last word of the paragraph to provide what I'm calling a "roadmap sentence"]

Douglass elaborately apologizes for his own limitations and assures his readers that the apology is genuine rather than mere standard formality

We focused on this phrase during class discussion. Remember that the idea of "natural rights" invokes rights that come before the civic/political. (And, of course, such rights were invoked by the American and French "declarations"....

Notice how long Douglass spends unrolling the extended metaphor of the river--even though it is merely a negative example (used to depict the kind of nation which America is not)

This recent article from an American historian gives some context for the "4th of July oration" as a genre, before presenting a discussion of Douglass' speech:

"The Best 4th of July Speech in American History"

Finally, an exercise for the group!

I'd like you all to read these seven suggestions, and then respond critically to one, from the point of view of your own practice / discipline. Why do / don't you "buy it?"

you guessed it!

Here is another translation of this sentence, taken from Denis Diderot, Encyclopedic Liberty: Political Articles in the Dictionary of Diderot and D’Alembert [2016], which renders it considerably more lucid:

"This is doubtless a drawback, but it affects all government in general, and by itself, it proves nothing for or against except by its rarity or its frequency."

I will note that here we have a moment of "close reading"!

One final notation: this language--specifically, the phrase "rights of man"--signals a new way of thinking beginning to emerge. The word "man" here is potentially universal: the rights spoken of here are not circumscribed by particular definitions of manhood (race, religion, nationality). (The next decade of French history offers some evidence on how such rights were and were not extended in practice...)

The connection between this document and "our" declaration (linked) will likely be the first thing that comes to many of your minds.

First, Jefferson's most famous sentence from that Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Next, a paragraph from a leading historian of the French Revolution:

“With this one sentence Jefferson turned a typical eighteenth-century document about political grievances into a lasting proclamation of human rights....Thirteen years later, Jefferson was in Paris when the French began to think about drawing up a statement of their rights. In January 1789—several months before the fall of the Bastille—Jefferson's friend, marquis de Lafayette, veteran of the War of American Independence, drafted a French declaration, most likely with Jefferson's help. When the Bastille fell on July 14, and the French Revolution began in earnest, the demand for an official declaration gathered momentum. Despite Lafayette's best efforts, no one hand shaped the document as had Jefferson for the American Congress. On August 20, the new National Assembly opened discussion of twenty-four articles drafted by an unwieldy committee of forty deputies. After six days of tumultuous debate and endless amendments, the French deputies had only approved seventeen articles. “Exhausted by the continuing contention and needing to turn to other pressing matters, the deputies voted on August 27, 1789, to suspend discussion of the draft and provisionally adopt the already approved articles as their Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.”

(Lynn Hunt. Inventing Human Rights (2007))

I would like you to annotate this reading the same way as you did Pericles' oration, with one exception: you can also look this time to make comparisons! (We will continue to annotate in this way for the second week of class: after that point, I'll provide more specific guidelines to work toward connecting annotations to larger writing assignments.

This is the "ACE" paragraph indicated on my handout.

Remember, I've asked you to mark it up using those three categories!

The first example of the key word from our class!

(I should have left these instructions here as well, so I'm doing it now.)

Since this is our first reading for the class, I'm asking you each to make (at minimum) one annotation that falls into each of the three categories I list on the "annotating readings" page:

informational/contextual notations: These sorts of notations are “footnotes”: providing a chunk of information that furnishes helpful context for readers. Different printed editions of texts have different styles of footnotes; I expect that you will make annotations of this sort primarily for your own purposes, or to fill in gaps in the context I’ve provided for you (and I’ll be making these annotations on texts myself!)

rhetorically focused notations: Here we’ll be focusing on what the author is doing and why they are doing it: annotating to enhance our understanding and build a foundation for engaging with the authors’ argument.

interpretive/analytical notations: Here we get to the kind of thing that might happen in an online “discussion forum” or a face-to-face discussion in a classroom. You will be making claims; pointing at contexts to show why those claims matter; analyzing texts, events, and ideas to generate evidence to support those claims; using key terms that we’ll weave into our conversations as the course; and, while doing all these things, honing your own sense of written style and characteristic stance as a writer.

Begin here, as Thucydides introduces the context of Pericles' oration.

The Encyclopedia is one of the great documents of the "age of citizenship"; it reviews the past history of the concept at a moment when modern citizenship was soon to burst into life with two national revolutions.

First, some more historical background:

The Encyclopedia (subtitled: “systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts”) was published in 28 volumes (17 of text, 11 of plates) over 21 years (1751–1772), and consists of over 70,000 articles, contributed by over 140 contributors, among them many of the luminaries of the French Enlightenment. The work aims to provide a compendium of existing human knowledge to be transmitted to subsequent generations, a transmission intended to contribute to the progress and dissemination of human knowledge and to a positive transformation of human society. The orientation of the Encyclopedia is decidedly secular and implicitly anti-authoritarian. Accordingly, the French state of the ancien régime censors the project, and it is completed only through the persistence of Diderot. The collaborative nature of the project, especially in the context of state opposition, contributes significantly to the formation of a shared sense of purpose among the wide variety of intellectuals who belong to the French Enlightenment. The knowledge contained in the Encyclopedia is self-consciously social both in its production – insofar as it is immediately the product of what the title page calls “a society of men of letters” – and in its address – insofar as it is primarily meant as an instrument for the education and improvement of society. It is a striking feature of the Encyclopedia, and one by virtue of which it exemplifies the Baconian conception of science characteristic of the period, that its entries cover the whole range and scope of knowledge, from the most abstract theoretical to the most practical, mechanical and technical.

from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/#EmeSciEnc

I would like you to annotate this reading the same way as you did Pericles' oration, with one exception: you can also look this time to make comparisons! (We will continue to annotate in this way for the second week of class: after that point, I'll provide more specific guidelines to work toward connecting annotations to larger writing assignments.

When did this phrase become well-known?

English spelling!?

Testing....only a test

The selection I’ve provided is from the concluding chapter of Hochschild’s classic book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

(I decided not to provide the chapter that discusses the details of flight attendant selection, training and labor, since some of those details now seem dated—but the world she describes, a world in which the service industry is steadily increasing in importance, is still very much our world.)

This reading serves to summarize the perspective of our class: the range of time Hochschild addresses is, roughly, the range between William Wordsworth's birth and today.

Once again, you have free rein for annotations (just as in my Frankfurt guidelines). I will discuss mini-research paper possibilities for this text in class with you on Tuesday!

Picking up on Joshua's closing question in our 11/21 meeting, let me ask, would it be accurate to substitute authenticity for "sincerity" in Frankfurt's phrase--or would you want to argue that there is a fundamental difference?

Nobody annotated this word! ...and consider our course topic! (Maybe I should have shortened the essay via excerpting...)

Consider the various dates when this essay was published (1986/2005); consider your date of reading (2017). At what point would a paragraph like this one not have seemed so plausible? Can we imagine a world without BS?

You may have thought to yourself: "Wow, you get to do this in a REAL essay!?" Think of Frankfurt's procedure in terms of the idea of "keyterm" or a key word: he needs the record of historical uses to build upon and develop his own sense of a concept. See, e.g., the Pittsburgh/Cambridge "Keywords Project".

I will quote their definition:

A ‘keyword’, in the sense in which we investigate keywords on this website, is a socially prominent word (e.g. art, industry, media or society) that is capable of bearing interlocking, yet sometimes contradictory and commonly contested contemporary meanings.

A nice little piece of "meta-commentary": Frankfurt lets us know that this (presumed) perception of Wittgenstein's will be important to his own developing definition of BS

See my "page note" for your annotation instructions...

Frankfurt's essay, written in 1986, "went viral" and was ultimately issued in expanded form twenty years later as a small book by Princeton University Press.

You'll notice that the argument depends primarily on two techniques:

1) Clarity of "close reading"--textual analysis is critical to Frankfurt's methods of argument

2) Use of the OED: Frankfurt is attempting to clarify a concept, and to disentangle that concept from a thicket of related language

These techniques will not be unfamiliar to you! "Analytic philosophy," Frankfurt's scholarly field, can be highly technical: but it also is potentially available to the common reader. I will cite the professor of philosophy William Blattner, defining the "standards of argumentative clarity and precision" that he takes to be fundamental to good philosophy:

It would be a large and difficult topic to try to specify what counts as argumentative clarity and precision. We can say something about it, though: defining technical terminology when it's introduced; writing in language that is more likely to be accessible to an educated outsider; clearly identifying assumptions; considering challenges to one's argumentative moves.

Since it's the last unit, I'm giving you free rein for annotations (my only stricture is that you make at least two of your own, and reply at least once to a colleague. Imagine that you might want to write an essay that in some way responds to Frankfurt's own; imagine that you want to impress your Expo 1113 professor with the careful reading strategies you've developed over the course of the semester; imagine....

I wonder if this is a useful tag?

Hmmmmm...how many kids use Facebook?

this, in fact, is the case!

Gentlemen, please see my annotation instructions in the "Page Note" to the Peterson reading!

A LONG bibliography: many of you will note texts to follow up on....

what OMG no no no leave Britney ALONE

Here are annotation instructions for Peterson's essay, a survey of the problem of authenticity that attempts to synthesize a wide range of material:

1) Please make at least one annotation that focuses on one of the aspects of the essay listed in our "Writing With Sources" handout (rhetorical; argumentative; paraphrase/summary; context/motive; disposition/stance). Use this notation to do something you think will be generally useful to the class / your own group as readers of this text.

2) Please make at least one annotation where you engage with the essay from the perspective of your own particular research idea: how will this essay help clarify/develop your thought process? Try to use the vocabulary from the "B-TEAM" handout ("Kinds of Sources").

3) Please response at least once to each of your group members! Give them feedback on how they are presenting their own perspective, on what they say about their project

This summarizes the essay's argument: notice how "real" and "imagined" are working together (the imaginary, that which operates at the level of the image, has real effects....)

A pair of academic keyterms!

Grant's article is very carefully written and organized; it is more concerned with clarity than with stylistic individuality, and it depends extensively on sources. In these respects, it models one style of writing about the humanities.

When reading Grant's essay, I want you to make primarily what I've called rhetorically focused notations:

focusing on what the author is doing and why they are doing it: annotating to enhance our understanding and build a foundation for engaging with the authors’ argument.

When you get to Grant's own claims, of course, feel free to engage with their substance!

This is the final reading in our "food & authenticity" mini-unit. I've provided it because it offers a new kind of perspective, a sociological understanding of the problems of understanding authenticity as a problem in both economic and political terms.

Annotations on this text are optional; those of you who have fallen behind, I encourage you to ask questions and make comments, focusing particularly on howItalic** the article works with the concept of authenticity, and the extent to which its key concept of "ghosts" might be helpful to you in your own developing research project...

This piece is particularly important, since it connects to what I have called the "Donald Trump & well-done steak" short assignment...

Reminder: I've left instructions in the "Page Note" to this document!

Hence, my own suggestion of a recent "daily event": we will look at the Trump/steak episode as a way of considering whether "mythological" analysis remains relevant and practiced today...

I think it will work better if each of you adds your link to a "Donald Trump and well-done steak" article here, as a reply to this "page note".

All you are looking for is an article on that subject that makes an argumentative claim and offers some sort of evidence; you are not required to find a position with which you personally agree....

I have not asked for annotation on the text, but after reading Prelim #1, I will make one general comment: I strongly encourage those of you who have not submitted that Prelim to do so, and I encourage all of you to ask questions about Harrris' breakdown of different ways writers "come to terms" with their sources. Use Hypothes.is for examples, for close reading of passages, for whatever other purposes seem helpful....

Mann wants instead to to look at country not as expressing or reflecting social class (though notice he doesn't disagree with this perspective), but as a "pose" or "style", a "performance." (Notice that this language harmonizes with the language of "producing" that he uses earlier in the section...)

Here Mann writes a whole paragraph setting up an analysis based on social class, only to then tell us in the next paragraph that he lacks space to say more about it! Why does he do this?

....And Gramsci (another Marxist) turns out to be the most important theoretician for Mann's argument!

So many names! Did we need Althusser as well? "Yes and no", would be my answer. Mann needs both to demonstrate his knowledge of the field and to establish the distinctness of his own perspective. He's not necessarily as reader-friendly as he could be here. But remember, Mann has just told us he wants to keep an Althuserian idea and apply it from a Gramscian perspective. And his readers--you!--can draw some things from his article without necessarily taking on Mann's entire perspective....

In this paragraph, Mann goes on to distinguish his approach from that of M & R (in whose footsteps he is following)

"Hear", Mann means, in the sense that you might think "wow, that music really speaks to me"--and, also, in the sense of French philosopher Louis Althusser's influential understanding of ideology, which the next section of the article introduces. I'll cite from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy--I'm drawing from section 4.2

the background ideas that we possess about the way in which the world must function and of how we function within it is, in this account, understood to be always present. Specific socio-economic structures, however, require particular ideologies. These ideologies are instantiated by institutions or “Ideological State Apparatuses” like family, schools, church, etc., which provide the developing subject with categories in which she can recognize herself. Inasmuch as a person does so and embraces the practices associated with those institutions, she has been successfully “hailed” or “interpellated” and recognized herself as that subject who does those kinds of things.

Here Mann cites a particular source for his idea, while at the same time paraphrasing that idea again.

Step back, if you're reading here, and think about: what are the ways in which we "normally" (everyday ways) think about music as cause, rather than as "reflection" / effect / whatev

A BIG CLAIM--yes? An ambitious claim. Paraphrase:

Country music, in the form a capitalist society gives it, produces a certain kind of "white subject"--a way of feeling and knowing oneself as white.

And I've left out one piece: the "contradictions"--since that requires a further detour into Althusser's development of Marxist theory. (General clue: if you see "contradictions" and "over-determination", you are reading work that draws upon this particular Marxist tradition.)

Key sentence indicating shift to Mann's own perspective: he will offer a verb that contrasts with EXPRESSES or REFLECTS -- his verb will be PRODUCES. And the last sentence of this paragraph states his own claim!

This paragraph shows Mann's command of the material. He defines a particular kind of scholarship on the "ideological work" of music. (Notice that examples of "meaning" go far beyond lyrical messages....)

So, this is the really tough section! (Remember, you guys are HONORS students....) [insert honors emojis here]

I provide a definition of "interpellation" on the next page. I'll comment once more on each paragraph to create a roadmap for y'all...

Mann's article is divided into six sections.

• intro
• Country music as race music
• Country music in the US: sound and story
• Nostalgia and 'musical interpellation'
• The sound of whiteness: a shared 'used to'
• Why does country music sound white?

This is an essay in which the argumentative structure is quite clear (see the summary at the end of section 1.) However, the thinking behind the argument is more difficult! The way Ward analyzes cause-and-effect logic may seem counter-intuitive.

Annotation instructions: this time around, you can stick to "informational/contextual" and "interpretive" footnotes. Let me know where the essay is difficult; do what you can to be specific* about the source of that difficulty!

I will annotate section 4, as it's the toughest part of the article. (The keyterm in Mann's title is a signal of this difficulty...) If it thwarts you the first time through, skip it over and keep going: you can still grasp much of Mann's analysis without an understanding of that section.

Reminder: I've opened annotations on this text for you to provide example & discussions of songs that fit with the 7-part breakdown Barker and Taylor offer at the conclusion of their essay! (Note: you can embed video, though I haven't tried yet--links to YouTube might be easier...)

Notice this sentence--this whole paragraph should cheer those of you who find the article grim. Do you see what Mann is challenging, in this paragraph?

Mann wants instead to to look at country not as expressing or reflecting social class (though notice he doesn't disagree with this perspective), but as a "pose" or "style", a "performance." (Notice that this language harmonizes with the language of "producing" that he uses earlier in the section...)

was William Wordsworth a country artist?

Here Mann writes a whole paragraph setting up an analysis based on social class, only to then tell us in the next paragraph that he lacks space to say more about it! Why does he do this?

....And Gramsci (another Marxist) turns out to be the most important theoretician for Mann's argument!

So many names! Did we need Althusser as well? "Yes and no", would be my answer. Mann needs both to demonstrate his knowledge of the field and to establish the distinctness of his own perspective. He's not necessarily as reader-friendly as he could be here. But remember, Mann has just told us he wants to keep an Althuserian idea and apply it from a Gramscian perspective. And his readers--you!--can draw some things from his article without necessarily taking on Mann's entire perspective....

Here Mann cites a particular source for his idea, while at the same time paraphrasing that idea again.

Step back, if you're reading here, and think about: what are the ways in which we "normally" (everyday ways) think about music as cause, rather than as "reflection" / effect / whatever....?

In this paragraph, Mann goes on to distinguish his approach from that of M & R (in whose footsteps he is following)

A BIG CLAIM--yes? An ambitious claim. Paraphrase:

Country music, in the form a capitalist society gives it, produces a certain kind of "white subject"--a way of feeling and knowing oneself as white.

And I've left out one piece: the "contradictions"--since that requires a further detour into Althusser's development of Marxist theory. (General clue: if you see "contradictions" and "over-determination", you are reading work that draws upon this particular Marxist tradition.)

Key sentence indicating shift to Mann's own perspective: he will offer a verb that contrasts with EXPRESSES or REFLECTS -- his verb will be PRODUCES. And the last sentence of this paragraph states his own claim!

This paragraph shows Mann's command of the material. He defines a particular kind of scholarship on the "ideological work" of music. (Notice that examples of "meaning" go far beyond lyrical messages....)

So, this is the really tough section! (Remember, you guys are an HONORS section....) [insert honors emojis here]

I've provided a definition of "interpellation" earlier in these annotations. I'll comment once more on each paragraph to create a roadmap for you guys

Note the diction here!

You will notice that this phrase should be surrounded by em dashes:

--and not, say, 'Punk Rock Month--

ALL em dashes are missing from the PDF upload. This is a text coding interaction problem of some kind that I can't solve: my apologies! (However, I did manage to eliminate the unreadable font of the originally uploaded copy of this article.)

Mann's article is divided into six sections.

1. intro
2. Country music as race music
3. Country music in the US: sound and story
4. Nostalgia and 'musical interpellation'
5. The sound of whiteness: a shared 'used to'
6. Why does country music sound white?

This is an essay in which the argumentative structure is quite clear (see the summary at the end of section 1.)

However, the thinking behind the argument is more difficult! The way Ward analyzes cause-and-effect logic may seem counter-intuitive. (Compare Foucault's argument that confession "produces" truth [my emphasis].)

Annotation instructions: this time around, you can stick to "informational/contextual" and "interpretive" footnotes. Let me know where the essay is difficult; do what you can to be *specific** about the source of that difficulty!

I will annotate section 4, as it's the toughest part of the article. (The keyterm in Mann's title is a signal of this difficulty...) If it thwarts you the first time through, skip it over and keep going: you can still grasp much of Mann's analysis without an understanding of that section.

Jan-Werner Müller's essay was published in the Boston Review last fall. The essay is drawn from a book published by the U of Pennsylvania Press; that site blurbs it and provides a brief bio of Müller.

An interesting choice of final word.....what do you think Muller was up to here? Any takers?

Notice how assumptions about audience come to the surface here...

Question (based on my memories of the Democratic primary): what is the DIFFERENCE between this kind of advocacy and populism?

The title phrase, appearing as part of a definition: to understand populism we need to understand fantasy AND reality, Muller argues...

more definition by negation: this section of the essay gets tricky as Muller piles up such phrasings--but he wants to emphasize that populism's "essence" cannot be reduced to single policy tendencies or manifestations

A concept to keep in mind...

This is helpful: here Muller is saying "hey: some advanced Academic English coming up!" (Combining this with the terms Muller DIDN'T define in the same way can help you think about his desired audience..)

Here we could connect Muller with Taylor's essay.

Note how the rhetorical figure of "chiasmus" works to phrase Muller's distinction clearly and memorably!

I've highlighted Müller's distinction between demagoguery and populism.

Question: which of these two terms is more closely linked to the idea of authenticity, as we've been thinking about it?

A very clearly phrased and strong (=ambitious) claim: there's been a lot of discussion of X...& it still needs to be clarified.

We will annotate Müller in the period before class; we will then use the "Academic English" handout to do a workshop with the article in class.

Any of the three categories of annotations are "in play" for this reading; please make public at least two different annotations.

I've opened annotations on this text for you to provide examples of songs that fit with the 7-part breakdown Barker and Taylor offer at the conclusion of their essay! (Note: you can embed video, though I haven't tried yet--links to YouTube might be easier...)

UPDATE: several of you have not yet added your texts! Also: please be more explicit about the connection you see to Barker & Taylor's 7-part breakdown (131-132)--in some of your cases the connection is obvious, but in others less so...

Enjoy the presence of students past in the annotations on this text! I have decided not to delete them, partly because of the nature of this particular text/discussion: perhaps students from the future will smile, nod, laugh or cry at your own musical selections...

Annotations weren't staying anchored here, so I've added this...

I've opened annotations on this text for you to provide examples of songs that fit with the 7-part breakdown Barker and Taylor offer at the conclusion of their essay! (Note: you can embed video, though I haven't tried yet--links to YouTube might be easier...)

Taylor gives us an analysis of recognition that is at the same time a discussion of authenticity. You will see a number of resonances with what we've read thus far.

When annotating Taylor, please make both rhetorically focused notations and interpretive/analytical notations: I want you to consider both the overall substance of Taylor's argument and the way in which he addresses his reader.

The text will be open for annotation until the end of the week (week 5).

At the end of this week, I will give everyone a preliminary grade for "annotations so far", with a brief breakdown of how well you're doing what I'm looking for and how you can do (even) better!

There are many Charles Taylors! I will let Wikipedia handle the disambiguation: we are reading the Canadian philosopher.)

For a recent piece on Taylor, see this essay from the New Yorker magazine entitled "How to Restore Your Faith in Democracy.". The profile was published on the occasion of Taylor's winning a major new prize in philosophy, awarded to a thinker “whose ideas are intellectually profound but also able to inform practical and public life.”

Goldberg's article takes discussion of sexuality and identity into the present day, while at the same time rooting this debate in a history of feminism (considering her return to 1973, we might even call this "feminism after Foucault").

We will use this article as a point of transition into our next unit, in which we explore the relationship between individual authenticity and group membership. (Unit 2 has been retitled "From Popular Music to Populism")

As a piece of recent journalism, I've also provided this article to stimulate possible research paper topics.

Annotation on this one is optional (for those of you who need to catch up; I will read and give extra credit to all of you who do participate, thought! (And remember: participation using the 3-category annotation breakdown is the best kind of participation....)

Wordsworth's sister's manuscript (also quoted by the editor of our text of "The Solitary Reaper") of which we have a small selection, was written in 1803-5, revised from memory in 1822, and not published until 1874.

Annotation instructions: please comment on this text or on the short text from Thomas Wilkinson. You have free rein; the question I'm most interested in is the ways in which these texts make you feel differently about Wordsworth's poem. Questions of authenticity, I suspect, will emerge....

This is the manuscript to which Wordsworth refers in the 1807 footnote (provided by the editor of our copy of "The Solitary Reaper").

Annotation instructions: please comment on this text or on the short text from Dorothy Wordsworth. You have free rein; the question I'm most interested in is the ways in which these texts make you feel differently about Wordsworth's poem. Questions of authenticity, I suspect, will emerge....

Our selection takes Rousseau only up to age 16; at the time of writing, though--as Rousseau notes in the text--the author is an older man. Moreover, he was a man with a reputation. Rousseau was perhaps the most famous writer of the 18th century; along with a few others (most notably the poet Lord Byron ) he has been called the first modern "celebrity." His intellectual reputation derived largely from works of political philosophy; but he owed European fame to the sensational success of his novel Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloise, a novel consisting of letters between two lovers.

As a famous author, Rousseau was part of the world of "literature"; at the same time, Rousseau distrusted all established social institutions as sources of conformity and control--as sources, I'll suggest, of inauthenticity. (This perspective, similar to the attitudes expressed in WW's "Preface," is left implicit in our selection). Rousseau's work presents especially vividly one of the central problems of authenticity: how can we trust that another is telling the truth, not merely about matters of "fact," but about their own innermost self? In your reading, you may take note of matters of fact that seem dubious--but matters of feeling are ultimately more crucial.

A reasonably short biographical essay on Rousseau may be found in the Britannica:

http://academic.eb.com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau/109503

Note: when reading a translated work, it can be worthwhile to consult multiple versions. Here is an alternate translation of our reading:

http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Rousseau/conf01.html

(The French original may be easily found online as well...)

Begin here! Note my two "page notes", available for your reading assistance....

This note consists of an outline of our selection!

IV. Confession: power/knowledge form at base of our S.S. [58-60] A. Brief historical sketch of confessional practices B. Modern “confessional society”: justice, medicine, education, family, love ... C. Cultural symptoms

1. Metamorphosis in literature: from epic to confession
2. And in philosophy: consciousness as basis: [again, F’s antipathy to phenomenology] D. We miss power relations of confessional practices bcs we see power as repressive

V. Sex-confession: part of “immense labor” of "subjection" [assujettissement] [60-63] A. Sex as privileged theme of confession:

1. linking discursive incitement
2. and proliferation of perversions B. Ritual elements of confession
3. Speaking subject is also subject of statement
4. Unfolds w/in a power relation: interlocutor is an authority
5. Truth corroborated by obstacles and resistances to be overcome 4. Expression produces intrinsic modifications in confessing person C. Differences of confession with other forms (education or initiation) D. Power elements in confession thus different from these other forms:
6. Direction of discourse from below
7. Secrecy from its general baseness
8. Veracity guaranteed by bond of speaker and listener 4. Domination by the listener/questioner
9. Effect on one from whom truth is wrested

VI. Transformations in confessional practice [63-67] A. Spread & intensification of confession: constitutes great archive of sex/pleasure B. solidified by medicine, psychiatry, pedagogy: paradox of a confessional science

1. Problems: a. conflict of two modes of producing truth: confession vs. science b. validity of introspection; lived experience as evidence, etc.
2. Solution via 5 procedures: a. clinical codification of inducement to speak [=combine conf. w/ exam] b. postulate of general and diffuse causality [=sex behind everything] c. principle of sexual latency [=sex hides itself from confessee] d. method of interpretation [=self-blindness redressed by confessor's interpret] e. medicalization of effects of confession [=catharsis as cure of pathology]

VII. “Broad historical perspective” [67-70] A. sexuality as correlative of scientia sexualis

1. Its features are not ideological mis-representations [Marxist/Reichean] or taboo misunderstandings [psychoanalytic]
2. But functional requirements of a discourse producing its truth a. Thus “naturality” of sexuality is effect of power-knowledge b. Characteristics: (1) susceptible of pathology and hence object of normalization (2) field of meanings to be deciphered (3) site of processes obscured by certain mechanisms (4) focus of indefinite causal relations (5) an obscure speech to be listened to
3. Thus sexuality must be seen as part of history of discourses [their "economy"] B. F's "general working hypothesis"
4. 19th C society set up "an entire mechanism for producing truth about sex" 2. this demand for truth sets up suspicion of sex as secret, cause, sign ... C. Two linked processes of sex-truth
5. sex must speak the truth [even if it must be interpreted]
6. sex must tell us OUR truth [the buried truth of the supposed truth of our self-consciousness] D. knowledge of the subject produced confessional sex-truth
7. knowledge of what causes subject to be ignorant of himself
8. unconsciousness of subject; truth in the other, etc.
9. “tactics of power" in sex discourse [sex-truth as power/knowledge]

Outline by John Protevi / Permission to reproduce granted for academic use<br> protevi@lsu.edu / http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/HS1.pdf

Michel Foucault is among the most cited of 20th-century authors across the humanities. (link courtesy of the foucault.info site...)

A reliable short biography of Foucault can be found in the Britannica:

http://academic.eb.com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Michel-Foucault/35013

Our selection from Foucault's History of Sexuality V. 1 focuses on confession in relation to sexuality. For Foucault, sexuality is a "discourse" that "produces" a truth about the self: there is no prior, natural truth that is discovered. And "confession" ( a "technique" it is far older than modernity, encompassing more than sexuality) is crucial to understanding how truths about sex become truths about the self. This may seem an abstract or strange perspective: note that a "They Say / I Say" structure is prominent in Foucault's argument, helping ground it....

In annotating, feel free to work in any of our three categories. You will find the text difficult!--expressions of struggle in your annotations are OK. I have provided, in a second "Page Note", a complete outline of our selection written by a Foucault scholar.

This note consists of an outline of our selection!

III. Procedures for producing truth of sex: ars erotica and scientia sexualis [57-58] A. Ars erotica:

1. truth drawn from pleasure itself:
2. pleasure evaluated and used to shape sexual practice; 3. esoteric practice guided by master B. West seems to have no ars erotica [but cf 74ff], but is only one w/ a scientia sexualis

IV. Confession: power/knowledge form at base of our S.S. [58-60] A. Brief historical sketch of confessional practices B. Modern “confessional society”: justice, medicine, education, family, love ... C. Cultural symptoms

1. Metamorphosis in literature: from epic to confession
2. And in philosophy: consciousness as basis: [again, F’s antipathy to phenomenology] D. We miss power relations of confessional practices bcs we see power as repressive

V. Sex-confession: part of “immense labor” of "subjection" [assujettissement] [60-63] A. Sex as privileged theme of confession:

1. linking discursive incitement
2. and proliferation of perversions B. Ritual elements of confession
3. Speaking subject is also subject of statement
4. Unfolds w/in a power relation: interlocutor is an authority
5. Truth corroborated by obstacles and resistances to be overcome
6. Expression produces intrinsic modifications in confessing person C. Differences of confession with other forms (education or initiation) D. Power elements in confession thus different from these other forms:
7. Direction of discourse from below
8. Secrecy from its general baseness
9. Veracity guaranteed by bond of speaker and listener 4. Domination by the listener/questioner
10. Effect on one from whom truth is wrested

VI. Transformations in confessional practice [63-67] A. Spread & intensification of confession: constitutes great archive of sex/pleasure B. solidified by medicine, psychiatry, pedagogy: paradox of a confessional science

1. Problems: a. conflict of two modes of producing truth: confession vs. science b. validity of introspection; lived experience as evidence, etc.
2. Solution via 5 procedures: a. clinical codification of inducement to speak [=combine conf. w/ exam] b. postulate of general and diffuse causality [=sex behind everything] c. principle of sexual latency [=sex hides itself from confessee] d. method of interpretation [=self-blindness redressed by confessor's interpret] e. medicalization of effects of confession [=catharsis as cure of pathology]

VII. “Broad historical perspective” [67-70] A. sexuality as correlative of scientia sexualis

1. Its features are not ideological mis-representations [Marxist/Reichean] or taboo misunderstandings [psychoanalytic]
2. But functional requirements of a discourse producing its truth a. Thus “naturality” of sexuality is effect of power-knowledge b. Characteristics: (1) susceptible of pathology and hence object of normalization (2) field of meanings to be deciphered (3) site of processes obscured by certain mechanisms (4) focus of indefinite causal relations (5) an obscure speech to be listened to
3. Thus sexuality must be seen as part of history of discourses [their "economy"] B. F's "general working hypothesis"
4. 19th C society set up "an entire mechanism for producing truth about sex"
5. this demand for truth sets up suspicion of sex as secret, cause, sign ... C. Two linked processes of sex-truth
6. sex must speak the truth [even if it must be interpreted]
7. sex must tell us OUR truth [the buried truth of the supposed truth of our self-consciousness] D. knowledge of the subject produced confessional sex-truth
8. knowledge of what causes subject to be ignorant of himself
9. unconsciousness of subject; truth in the other, etc.
10. “tactics of power" in sex discourse [sex-truth as power/knowledge]

Outline by John Protevi / Permission to reproduce granted for academic use<br> protevi@lsu.edu / http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/HS1.pdf

Michel Foucault is among the most cited of 20th-century authors across the humanities. (link courtesy of the foucault.info site...)

A reliable short biography of Foucault can be found in the Britannica:

http://academic.eb.com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Michel-Foucault/35013

Our selection from Foucault's History of Sexuality V. 1 focuses on confession in relation to sexuality. For Foucault, sexuality is a "discourse" that "produces" a truth about the self: there is no prior, natural truth that is discovered. And "confession" ( a "technique" it is far older than modernity, encompassing more than sexuality) is crucial to understanding how truths about sex become truths about the self. This may seem an abstract or strange perspective: note that a "They Say / I Say" structure is prominent in Foucault's argument, helping ground it....

In annotating, feel free to work in any of our three categories. You will find the text difficult! Feel free to ask questions; I have provided, in a second "Page Note", a complete outline of our selection written by a Foucault scholar.

This is key for anyone who's confused by the terms throughout the essay: "meter"="verse"=for example, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter; but if you read enough prose, with an ear tuned to poetic rhythm, you'll find that rhythm creeps in all the time....

Here are my annotation instructions again from the "how things work" / syllabus page:

1) informational/contextual notations: These sorts of notations are “footnotes”: providing a chunk of information that furnishes helpful context for readers. Different printed editions of texts have different styles of footnotes; I expect that you will make annotations of this sort primarily for your own purposes, or to fill in gaps in the context I’ve provided for you (and I’ll be making these annotations on texts myself!)

2) rhetorically focused notations: Here we’ll be focusing on what the author is doing and why they are doing it: annotating to enhance our understanding and build a foundation for engaging with the author's argument.

3) interpretive/analytical notations: Here we get to the kind of thing that might happen in an online “discussion forum.” You will be making claims; offering contexts to show why those claims matter; analyzing texts, events, and ideas to generate evidence to support those claims...

My instructions for your annotations on this text are as follows. I've provided annotations in category #1; I want you each to make three annotations, one for each category. For #2, I'd like you to comment on some aspect of WW's thesis/motive, since those are the first "Elements of the Essay" I've introduced in our class. For #1 and #3, you have free rein. (An often misused idiom: the metaphor involves horses, monarchs...) Please set your annotations to private until the start of class Tuesday!

Link your annotation to the specific word/phase/sentence you're commenting on. This is a "page note": don't reply to it, unless you have a question about these instructions.

Lyrical Ballads first appeared in 1798, without a preface. The volume was a co-production of William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Our text of WW’s “Preface” combines the 1800, 1802, and 1805 versions. The “Preface” was added in 1800 and revised significantly in 1802: I indicate the major 1802 edition with a black underline. (If you simply skip the addition, the sentence picks up in paragraph 22 where it leaves off in paragraph 13—this is how the text looked in 1800, and this is what I want us to focus on!.

Neither of the two WW poems we have read were included in Lyrical Ballads, but they were part of the same period in WW's career. (They were composed slightly later, in 1804/5; both first appeared in book form in 1807.)

WW’s “Preface” is important because in many senses he is “ahead of his time”: he anticipates a perspective that has become our modern perspective. By 1800, a mass, literate public existed and was growing rapidly. What relationship should the ancient traditions of art, particularly literature, have to this rapidly growing audience? How would this public come to understand its own life in and through reading imaginative writing? Discussions of literature around this time (and ever since!) tend to focus on language because literature is made out of language, and language is something used by everybody for many non-artistic reasons all the time. (This makes literature different from classical music, or painting.) And different kinds of language, historically, are associated with different groups of people. Thus, arguments about literary language (“what language should be used?” are always associated with arguments about society (“whose language should be used?”).

Moreover, Wordsworth’s “Preface” is important because the terms it which defines poetry are terms that would prove hugely influential in the developing understanding of what poetry should do–an understanding we now capture with the term “lyric” poetry.

WW’s prose style is fairly complex–these sentences are longer than modern sentences! The reading will be slow for that reason. I will mention two other possible difficulties: First, the problem of context. WW makes reference to various writers of his own time and of previous eras. It’s not necessary that you know these writers (you’ll all know Shakespeare!), but the best place to start if you want to know a little more is the Wikipedia. (Generally speaking, the more controversial a subject, the less reliable the Wiki entry; I’ll be saying more about this when we start to discuss research methods.) Second, the problem of old-fashioned or complex vocabulary. Here, the Oxford English Dictionary will be your best friend (see our writing “links”).

In the literary sense of the word: " A literary work portraying rural life or the life of shepherds, esp. in an idealized or romantic form." See the OED definition ii, 3

My annotation guidelines are in a "page note"!

At the end of the file I've provided the notes furnished by the editor of this text (these include both WW's own explanatory notes, and some additional notes).

I'm asking you again to annotate your reading, & I've kept things simple this time:

--one annotation of your own, where you comment on the poem in terms of the ideas we've set up thus far in the class (connecting the poem to the "Preface" or to ideas of authenticity more generally)

--& one comment on someone else's annotation, where you take up their idea and try to take it one step further!

big claim!

Here are my annotation instructions again from the "how things work" / syllabus page:

1) informational/contextual notations: These sorts of notations are “footnotes”: providing a chunk of information that furnishes helpful context for readers. Different printed editions of texts have different styles of footnotes; I expect that you will make annotations of this sort primarily for your own purposes, or to fill in gaps in the context I’ve provided for you (and I’ll be making these annotations on texts myself!)

2) rhetorically focused notations: Here we’ll be focusing on what the author is doing and why they are doing it: annotating to enhance our understanding and build a foundation for engaging with the author's argument.

3) interpretive/analytical notations: Here we get to the kind of thing that might happen in an online “discussion forum.” You will be making claims; offering contexts to show why those claims matter; analyzing texts, events, and ideas to generate evidence to support those claims...

My instructions for your annotations on this text are as follows. I've provided annotations in category #1; I want you each to make three annotations, one for each category. For #2, I'd like you to comment on some aspect of WW's thesis/motive, since those are the first "Elements of the Essay" I've introduced in our class. For #1 and #3, you have free rein. (An often misused idiom: the metaphor involves horses, monarchs...) Please set your annotations to private until the start of class Tuesday!

Link your annotation to the specific word/phase/sentence you're commenting on. This is a "page note": don't reply to it, unless you have a question about these instructions.

Lyrical Ballads first appeared in 1798, without a preface. The volume was a co-production of William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Our text of WW’s “Preface” combines the 1800, 1802, and 1805 versions. The “Preface” was added in 1800 and revised significantly in 1802: I indicate the major 1802 edition with a black underline. (If you simply skip the addition, the sentence picks up in paragraph 22 where it leaves off in paragraph 13—this is how the text looked in 1800, and this is what I want us to focus on!.

Neither of the two WW poems we have read were included in Lyrical Ballads, but they were part of the same period in WW's career. (They were composed slightly later, in 1804/5; both first appeared in book form in 1807.)

WW’s “Preface” is important because in many senses he is “ahead of his time”: he anticipates a perspective that has become our modern perspective. By 1800, a mass, literate public existed and was growing rapidly. What relationship should the ancient traditions of art, particularly literature, have to this rapidly growing audience? How would this public come to understand its own life in and through reading imaginative writing? Discussions of literature around this time (and ever since!) tend to focus on language because literature is made out of language, and language is something used by everybody for many non-artistic reasons all the time. (This makes literature different from classical music, or painting.) And different kinds of language, historically, are associated with different groups of people. Thus, arguments about literary language (“what language should be used?” are always associated with arguments about society (“whose language should be used?”).

Moreover, Wordsworth’s “Preface” is important because the terms it which defines poetry are terms that would prove hugely influential in the developing understanding of what poetry should do–an understanding we now capture with the term “lyric” poetry.

Why is it called Hypothesis?

even Thanksgiving???