Introduction: A personal response to literature is a five-paragraph essay where the author describes the effect a certain aspect of an author’s artistry had on him. There are two ways of completing this assignment, you may choose either. The first is reflective, which reads much like an essay. You will simply detail the effect an element of artistry the author used had on you following the outline below. The second is imaginative. With this approach, you will do your best to mimic an element of artistry that an author used.
Instructions:
- Find an element of artistry used by an author that we studied in quarter 3 that you would like to write about. Refer to the artistry sheet for more information or a refresher on what artistry is.
- Please choose one of the approaches described above. You may pick either 1) reflective or 2) imaginative.
- If you chose reflectively, please follow the outline provided below.
- For both essays, be sure to follow all MLA guidelines for headings and source citing.
- You may use “I” and other personal pronouns in this paper due to its nature.
Instructions for the Reflective Approach:
- Write an introduction with a thesis that clearly states what element of artistry you will be reflecting on and how it bettered the piece of literature you are looking at.
- In your first body paragraph, simply describe how the artistry affected you.
- In your second body paragraph, explain how you think the artist intended to use that
element to enhance their piece’s theme or meaning.
- In your 3rd body paragraph, answer the question of how did your experience with the
author’s artistry convince you to agree or disagree with their theme or meaning?
- Conclude by summarizing points and restating thesis in a different way.
Instructions for Imaginative Approach:
- Write a short blurb at the start of your paper that details which author, piece, and element of artistry you will be trying to replicate.
- Write something, (a poem, a short story, a haiku, a script, etc.) that replicates the author’s artistry to the best of your ability.
- Please keep imaginative submissions to less than 2 pages. (You may ignore the MLA rule on double spacing for imaginative pieces.)
- Since the guidelines for this approach are more ambiguous, please only attempt it if you feel comfortable identifying and understanding artistry and its impact on a reader.