EN 658: SPRING/2012
PAPER 1
Megan Campbell
“Winthrop, Thoreau & Emerson: Imaginings of the New England Spatial Metaphor”
"From Winthrop's dictate that 'we shall be as a City upon a hill' through Emerson's promulgation that
'the world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature,' the New England writing
establishment's predilection for deriving philosophical inspiration from physical location and
topography has generated, perhaps unwittingly, not only an indexical way of interpreting the region's
depiction in media, but also a type of cross-generational dialectic about the rendering of space/time."
[Concluding sentence of graf 1.]
Aaron Devine
"Reading Boston & New England: Understanding the Place and My Place in it"
"Today, my own story and my sense of New England are shaped less by what has been written in the
past and more by the stories that are being written now. The kinds of stories that happen in a place
where Fenway Park leaves me silent as stout Cortez. Or where Poet Laureates [i.e., Robert Pinsky] in
elevators appeal to Sages standing in God's holy fire." [Final sentence of essay.]
Joshua Freeman
"The Poles of a New England Life"
"My life, predominantly my childhood, is split between two places, the city of Boston and Mount
Desert Island, Maine. The city, where I was born, is a carnival--so much always left undone. My island
summers were all about toil, isolation and religion." [Opening sentences.]
Jessica Hines
"Boston You're My Home"
"While I do not think John Winthrop had the Red Sox 2004 World Series run in mind while writing 'A
model of Christian Charity' upon the Arbella, he was certainly speaking to an ideal that is alive and
well centuries later." [First sentence, graf 2.]
Ryan Kennedy
"The God of Nature: A Comparison of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jonathan Edwards"
"Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained throughout their writings a strong
conviction that divinity was present in nature. However, this belief manifested itself in nearly opposite
ways in our respective luminaries....These notions about God through nature led these two men to have
distinct yet separate visions for the New England community. [First & final sentences, graf 1.]
2
Alicia LeBlanc
"John Winthrop and Nathaniel Hawthorne: Representations of New England Landscape and Character"
"Representations of New England changed dramatically over the course of these two centuries
[between Winthrop's sermon and Hawthorne's tales] as seen through the techniques and visions of the
two authors." [Final sentence, graf 1.]
David Lehan
"Taking on Harvard"
"Both Benjamin Franklin, in 1722, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1838, found fault with the education
produced from this institution and were openly critical in their writings." [Final sentence, graf 1.]
Jennifer Maio
"Against the Stereotype: Independent Female New England Authors" [Anne Bradstreet & Abigail
Adams]
"Both women demonstrate their independence and boldness in the way in which they write." [Final
sentence, graf 1.]
Brett Murphy
Untitled
"These delicate binaries--simplicity of life with complexity of nature, and solitude but with friendship-form subtexts in Walden, and are critical to understanding Thoreau's New England vision as a whole."
[Opening sentence, graf 2, section 2.]
Oriana Packer
"Nature and New England"
"To really get a feel for this region, you must find your way to the woods." [Final sentence, 1st graf.]
Jessica Sic
"Unveiling New England's Identity"
"Two of the most important Americans to question the formation of the New England myth are
Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although the men lived and wrote a century apart, their
ability to unveil the hypocrisies in society encouraged the new tradition of questioning the status quo, a
uniquely New England trait." [Sentences open graf 2.]
3
Christopher Sullivan
"Two Timely Reformers"
"Emerson's 'Divinity School Address' can be read, in many ways, as an indirect response to Winthrop's
'A Model of Christian Charity.'" [Opening sentence.]
Ryan Vautour
"Intimations of New England"
"To me, New England is something far larger in scope and importance than its total acreage--its net
percentage of American soil. My New England is the 120 year-old Victorian home in which I was
raised, just a mile up Farmington Avenue from the residence of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark
Twain, in Hartford, Connecticut." [Opening sentences, graf 2.]