Dialectical Journals
(AKA “Two Column Notes”
A way to keep track of what you
think while you read
Requirements
• Number all of your pages
• Entries must consist of a quote or very
close paraphrase and sufficient
commentary. Each entry therefore has 2
parts.
• Each entry must include the page number
for the quote. For the very first entry, you
must include the author’s name as well.
Requirements (continued)
• The is no required number of entries,
though you definitely should write at least
one entry per reading session.
• Write neatly—I can’t grade it if I can’t read
it.
• I will provide you a rubric in the very near
future.
Requirements (cont.)
• You must create a log on the first page(s)
that lists the date, author, title, and pages
read for each reading session.
i.e.
6/25/09 Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Pp.
xiii-70).
“When I beheld the Poet
blind, yet bold,/In slender
book his vast design
unfold…” (Marvell,
Prologue)
• The author shows the
irony of the brilliant mind
of Milton here—he was
blind, but he saw more,
figuratively speaking,
than others. He was more
insightful, more brilliant.
“His vast design” seems
to refer to the poet rather
than God himself,
implying a close
connection between the
poet and God and
perhaps suggesting that
God himself gave Milton
his ideas.
• “That to the height of this
great argument/I may
assert eternal
Providence,/And justify
the ways of God to men,”
(Milton 11).
• Here the author suggests
that he intimately knows
the ways of God and can
communicate that to the
reader. Again, we are
given a characterization
of the author/narrator as
a mouthpiece of God, so
to speak, and one who
has access to His divine
knowledge. Also, given
the discussion in the
introduction of the book,
this suggests that the
poet will show the reader
truth through metaphor
rather than simple
explanation.
•
“And re-assembling…consult
how we may henceforth most
offend our enemy; our own
loss how repair; How
overcome this dire calamity;
What reinforcement we may
gain from hope; If not, what
resolution from despair,”
(Milton 17).
• In this early characterization of
Satan, we see the polarized,
binary way that he sees the
world. He labels God “enemy”
although God expelled them
not as much from a sense of
anger as to teach a lesson.
Hope and despair are
contrasted, but are strangely
equal in his view. In fact, Milton
seems to attribute all that is
“Satanic” in the world to the
sense of gaining resolution
from despair. Still, while we
see the flaws in Satan’s logic,
we still feel for him, for he has
been driven from the side of
the God that he once loved—
Lucifer may, in Milton’s view,
be a tragic hero—his hubris is
clear and his fatal flaw is his
unreasonable sense of
fairness and justice, for this is
what caused him to rebel
against God in the first place.
Grading
• You will be scored on:
– Depth of thought
– Explanation and completeness of ideas