Assignment # 3
Catalog Essay (First Revison)
Due March 28

"...training in handling facts, brutal facts, is perhaps the best education for a wavering, youthful mind."

Leo Spitzer, "Linguistics and Literary History," 4.

In your revisions try to incorporate some primary source evidence to substantiate the claims of your thesis. You may consult the various research resources listed on the course website or meet with the professor to discuss other possible avenues of research. While you should certinly try and find contemporaneous citations regarding the author of the image or its public reception you could also (and just as profitably) search for how aspects of the image's content. (for example, if it is an example of a steamship, how were people writring about steamships at the same time that the image was taken?)

If you can find critical responses to the image look for what aspects of the work the writer focuses on and what aspects he or she ignores and try to interpret these features of the works' reception as a means of understanding something central and even essential to the work itself. Also pay attention the language the critic uses. Are there certain words or phrases that are especially revelatory in terms of an underlying motivation for the work? (For example does the author certain metaphors to describe aspects of the work?)

Include a bibliography with your essay.

 

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