Discovering new material for my argument!

I go to the library after class everyday, and have never considered looking through the actual books....until I compiled the thesis for this paper.  I've combed through multiple online sources, and felt content with my findings.

A couple of days ago I decided to hike up to the fifth floor, and when I arrived, quads burning, I decided not to disrupt the silence by asking for help.  (Also, I was...being prideful.)

I meandered through the shelves and thumbed through some interesting titles, when I stumbled upon the row of books I was looking for.  But I didn't pick those up.  I pulled out the ones below them, and awkwardly sat on the floor in my skirt.

Compilations of classic speeches!   I snapped pictures of the Table of Contents in each one, and noted that Christ's Sermon on the Mount was listed in nearly every single anthology.  If His words managed to make it this far, into anthologies published by Norton and the like, shouldn't they be studied in schools like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, or Abraham Lincoln's?

Maybe I won't use it in my argument, but it helped to get the ball of my thought process rolling.  Still a work in progress, but now when I can't think, I flip through pages of fifth floor books.  It gets the idea juices flowin'.

I did end up getting to Harmon & Holman's Handbook to Literature, though.... SO HELPFUL for my discussion of genre!  I highly recommend it.  As an English major, I just bought it on Amazon so I have my own copy for the rest of my degree.

Searching for a Good Title

In case you can't tell, I enjoy creative, provocative titles. At the risk of being obscure or pretentious, a good, eye-catching title can really "sell" your story or essay.

I like my titles to either be clever, explanatory, or (ideally) both. Looking at the printouts of our blog posts (which I was sure to gather in because I wanted to read people's comments!), I have settled on

Surmounted, Comprehended, Possessed

I like this title because it is a direct allusion to Stegner's essay "At Home in the Fields of the Lord," and I think it also provides a good outline for my paper. I've been wrestling with the ideas of author as observer or builder, the neurological underpinnings of memory, and the text of Recapitulation itself. These are nice punchy verbs which really encapsulate these ideas of three ways Wallace Stegner, his avatar Bruce Mason, and we, as readers, interact with text.

1. We surmount it. We get up above it: in my sketch, I drew the reader in the Salt Lake foothills with a telescope. Literature broadens our horizons.
2. We comprehend it. I have absolutely loved reading essays about how we interact with literature, from Borges to William James to Oscar Wilde (a post on the latter soon, as his ideas are important to this essay, although it's hard to imagine two men more unlike each other than Stegner and Wilde. ;-) ).
3. We possess it. This is that personal connection Dr. Burton's always hounding us about. The idea that great literature does, indeed, make us better: or at the very minimum, shape who we are.

I will spend roughly two pages on each concept. About a page of textual exposition, and another page proving the point argumentatively. Embedded in all three claims is a Cause/Effect argument. 

I'm more excited to draft this thing, the last paper of my college career. And it all began with a good title!

Choosing the Claim (Metapost)

Can you metapost....on your own...post?  Charly?  

So, I talked in a previous post about broadcasting my ideas to different sources, and how that has affected my thought process.  

Specifically, I sent my idea about the Bible being taught as literature to teachers and professors that I knew would oppose my idea.  Here is the response of one teacher who replied as I had hoped/expected:

I loved her response.  Very honest and thorough.  She has persuaded me to perhaps switch to a definition claim.  Or cause/effect.  A different claim that will argue the Bible to be more than just a religious text--that it could be as widely taught as Shakespeare or the classics, but not try to impose it upon teachers of public schools. 

I'd love your insight/help on which would be most effective.