Lit 342L
Spring 2007
Assignment #1: Due: 3/1/11 (10 points)
For this assignment you will write a short close reading of a passage from one text (a Hugo poem
from among those assigned or on handout, Wind From an Enemy Sky, or Winter Wheat). You
will be applying the skills of close literary analysis. While you may choose your own thesis (and
you should have a thesis), your essay should address at least one of the following questions:
How has your author addressed the particularities of state or regional or local identities? Do
these vary according to racial or cultural identity? What is your author’s relation to such
particularities? Is there some “truth” about Montanans that your author proposes, critiques,
contradicts, validates? (How) are people who live in Montana different from those who live
"East"? From each other? You shouldn’t need to consult outside sources, but if you do, be sure to
cite the sources you have consulted, following MLA style. The essay should be typed using 12
point font, with 1 inch margins. Your pages should be numbered. The essay should not be
shorter than 4 full pages, or longer than 8 full pages. For those of you not completely
comfortable with the conventions of literary analysis, I have placed a couple of books on reserve.
Some notes on how to read closely:
Pick a passage from the text. It may be a stanza (poetry), a few sentences, a paragraph, or a page
or two of text. To choose your passage, you might think about how a passage represents a turn
in the text, how it might express or elaborate on a "key word" in the text, how it might reveal a
sharp contrast or alliance, how it might offer a figure that stands for a larger theme or issue in the
text, or how it might confound you, pose a kind of question, etc. Once you have a passage
selected, read and re-read it several times. You might try a paraphrase, noting the difference
between the language of the passage and a paraphrase of its content. Start taking notes,
indicating what words carry more weight, what words have appeared earlier or later in the text,
anything that seems either unusual or typical in the text, etc. Think about the passage in terms of
the questions posed above. Keep thinking about the relationship your passage has to the whole
of the text. Does it foreshadow later events, themes, realizations? Think about the order of
disclosure, what the passage includes and excludes, etc. Re-read your notes and begin creating
an argument, using evidence from the text as support. You may also use text from Howard and
Fiedler to support your claims.