English 115 Pasupathi The Commonplace Book

Your final project for the course will be the culmination of a series of regular, and primarily self-monitored close reading exercises that you will frame (that is, introduce and conclude) with a coherent 34 page analysis of the contents within. In its final form, your Commonplace Book should consist of roughly 78 pages of writing (not counting quotations exceeding four lines and your works cited page).

From the title page of John Lockes book on the subject (London, 1706). At the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

You should not, however, conceive of this project as a 7-8 page paper. The assignment is intended to build upon your understanding of How to Read like a Renaissance Reader detailed for us by Dr. Adam Hooksand to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate that you have done so over the course of the semester. As you have learned from this and other assigned reading, early modern readers (a group that includes readers in Shakespeares time) would take the best examples of wisdom from their reading and copy them into Commonplace Books for easy access and remembrance. Dr. Alan Jacobs has compared them usefully to the Tumblrs that abound on the Web now; we might also envision them as an early (and somewhat more private) form of Pinterest. Of course, English 115 carries the LT designation, and so, for the purposes of this assignment, your Commonplace Books must involve academic writingand more of it than what we typically see on our friends Pinterest or Tumblr pages. Just as your own book will be distinct from these newfangled examples of common-placing, it will also feature some important modifications from the common-place books that early modern readers left.

Commonplace books kept by Sir Henry Cholmley (ca. 1624-1641) and Samuel Butler (ca.1680). MS ENG 703 and 636, respectively, from Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

First, early commonplace books typically contain works by multiple authors, often assembled with no attribution or identification, and relayed without commentary or extensive justification. Your commonplace book should contain, for the most part, only works by Shakespeare alone (identified according to MLA documentation style) and works assigned in this course. Additionally, the readers who compiled early commonplace books also copied quotations from texts by hand, whereas your modern versions will be compiled in an electronic environment and should be typed. You may use screen shots, pictures of handwritten notes, or images from texts, provided that you have a good rationale for doing so; keep in mind, however, that I can only appreciate and assess content that I am able to see clearly or read. Along the same lines, you may assemble your book by hand or in applications other than word processing programs. But please note that whether you compose your book old-school or on the web as a blog, Tumblr, or Pinterest page, you must also submit the final version as a carefully edited and proof-read text (.doc or .rtf) or PDF file. You must fulfill page count requirements to earn the LT credit and submit the final to the link on Blackboard. 1

Another difference between your project and the early modern commonplace book is in the distinct objectives I am setting before you. Whereas early compilers tended to copy down what they believed contained exemplary wisdom or beauty, you will be looking for passages that are compelling for the way their diction, form structure, and other aesthetic features shape a works content. Thus, your choices need to be guided by more substantive (and more selective) reasoning than simply trying to paste together quotations that sound pretty or seem true.

Commonplace book of Nathaniel Bridges, on angling (1694-1717). MS Eng 1490. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Many early commonplace books ostensibly lack an organizing principalat least one that readers other than the original owners can easily discern beyond the compilers general investment in wisdom and the pleasing turn of phrase or bon mot. The fact that these books sometimes include miscellaneous and trivial notes suggests that those who compiled such books were not making a concerted effort to keep the material within organized for the consumption of others. In many cases, the readers who kept them simply added passages that struck them as significant at a given moment for reasons they did not see fit to record, copying additional passages later which have no obvious relationship to previous ones. In contrast to these early readers, you will need to exert some kind of coherence onto the contents of your book in your introductory and concluding analytical remarks. Accordingly, you will need to choose passages for inclusion in your final version with an eye for constructing a larger narrative about what your selections have taught you about Shakespeares dramatic prose and poetry in his early career. That said, you need notand, in fact, should notbegin this project with any specific organizing principle in mind. Although you may ultimately opt to assemble passages that contain, for instance, a particular device or rely on different valences of single word for the Commonplace book you turn in, you should avoid selecting passages based on narrow criteria until we are at least halfway through the assigned reading for the course. For each text we read as a class, you should choose several passages you find noteworthy for their formal and aesthetic features as well as their content. Write brief explanations of what you find as you read, but continue to compile, reassemble, and review what youve added as you read more works. Sometime around our scheduled spring break, you can begin to contemplate what youve got with a more specific purpose in mind, surveying your book for patterns or remarkable distinctions in Shakespeares language that you believe might be worth exploring further. What do I mean by exploring further? First, you should return to a passages original context and see if you read it differently or notice something new once youve read multiple works by Shakespeare for our class. Additionally, you might look at other works to find other instances of the same phenomenon, with or without the aid of electronic tools (such as the OED, online concordances, Wordle or Voyant, all of which we will use in class exercises and are linked to our course Blackboard site). Be flexible and willing to swap passages in and out of what you think will form your final version. For each passage you include in your commonplace book, you should have at least one paragraph of analytical commentary on what we will describe in this class as its moving parts. Explain how those parts make meaning in the passage and why they warrant our attention. 2

Although you may choose thematic or conceptual resonances to organize your passages in the final version of your book, your observations about the passages within should not be limited to big-picture aspects. Youll have many opportunities to write about themes in other work you complete for this class; for this assignment, your objective is to consider a variety of instances that showcase Shakespeares use of languagehis deployment of devices and images, and the ways in which he structures words and ideas within a line or set of lines. Along those lines, the content of your commonplace book should not simply replicate discussions from class meetings, though you may expand upon those conversations or use them as a point of departure in some cases. The best responses to the assignment, however, will attend to passages from the assigned reading that we did not discuss in class or address in exam questions or on quizzes.

Detail from John Brinsleys Ludus literarius: or, the grammar schoole (London, 1612). Featured in the Folgers online exhibit Writing in Printed Books (STC 3768, copy 3) and in Hooks Anchora post, How to Read like a Renaissance Reader.

Once you have decided on the specific passages you would like to appear in the final version of your commonplace book, you can begin drafting the opening and closing frame. This frame is essentially an introduction and conclusion, but it is the most important part of the assignment because these 34 pages will prepare readers to examine the contents of the book and then reinforce specific claims about the material by following their consideration of it with clear and thoughtful analysis. Think of these portions as a guide to your book that deliberately leads readers through the books inner-contents with specific claims about what the passages individually and collectively illuminate about Shakespeares (dramatic) prose and verse style. Avoid making broad and evaluative claims and try instead to make narrow and concrete claims about how (not how well) language works. For example, rather than claim The complex uses of anaphora and antithesis make clear that Shakespeare is the best writer of all time, try Two of these passages demonstrate Shakespeares use of anaphora and antithesis to structure characters implicit critiques of figures in power. Any material you wrote on passages you opt not to include may be placed in between the last page of your analytical frame and the works cited page, labeled as an Appendix. To ensure that you are working steadily on this project as you read each work, I will periodically announce upcoming dates in which I will review your progress. These reports will require that you have a way to access to your commonplace-book-in-progress in class. In most cases, you will earn full-credit (counted towards the in-class and home-work portion of your final grade) if you can demonstrate in class that you have assembled a minimum of three quotations for each work we have read at that point in the semester, followed by brief commentary on each. I am also happy to discuss your progress on the project in more detail during office hours at any point. Prior to the submission of the final version, you will post a short description of your book as you intend to complete it on a special discussion forum on Blackboard; in this post, you will offer in brief some of the facets of language you intend to examine by way of your chosen passages, and raise any questions or concerns you have about the work that remains. In addition to posting your own description, you must also provide comments on the descriptions posted by two of your classmates within three class days from the deadline for posting. Please check the submission deadline for this project on your syllabus, and please note that it does not take the place of a final exam for the course. 3