"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”
E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
"We go for a walk in nature, we see a beautiful sunset — we breathe the order in through our senses, we feel connected. The inside begins to mirror the magnificent outside. In the Vedic tradition that connectedness is called 'yoga.'”
Chris Adamason, Vedic Architecture http://www.newlifejournal.com/aprmay04/adamson_0504.shtml
‘One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer* your thoughts into unity’. For days I could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]”* William Butler Yeats, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (*cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51 )
This is a multimedia essay of at least fourteen hundred words (four pages or so). TO QUALIFY AS WRITING FOR THIS COURSE IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE THE ESSAY MUST INCLUDE AT LEAST FOUR QUOTATIONS FROM VICTORIAN LITERATURE WITH FULL DOCUMENTATION. UNLESS YOU ARE FOCUSING ON A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL (AS IN OPTION 1), AT LEAST THREE OF THE QUOTES MUST BE FROM DIFFERENT VICTORIAN AUTHORS.
Option 2 compares the Victorian college experience with your own, no doubt citing Newman, Hardy, and Carroll. For some examples see Ashley though this is from a different class with different assignments. For a sense of the variety of possibilities see Carroll does Austin and "Alice as Parody of the U. T. Freshman Experience" in your anthology (678-679).
Option 3 is traditional literary critcism or research, such as "Jude's unusual sensitivity to animals recalls that of Hopkins and others and suggests fascinating parallels with Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which were just being discovered in India at that time."
Option 4 is a topic of your own choice but must be approved in advance by the instructor.
Option 1 focuses on the Victorian role model, exemplar, hero, or leader who best epitomizes your own passion and leadership vision. See, for example, Andrea, Debbie, though these are from different classes with different assignments. In this essay you are to focus especially on the roles of reading and writing in your exemplar's achievements.
This option is inspired specifically by the official "Core Purpose of the University" -- To transform lives for the benefit of society" -- and by its core value, "Leadership."
To understand the purposes and goals of this option, re-read Leadership carefully. To get a possible sense of direction for project one, consider various people who embody the passion you would like to have, and/or who epitomize a leadership vision like one you would like to have.
Focus especially on Lee's Discovering the Leader in You in your anthology. Pay special attention to questions such as "Who inspires you?" "How would you become a leader like your hero?" Very important for many people is the section on role models and how they have exhibited leadership. This essay IS ABOUT THE COMPOSITION OF SELF, THE CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTER THAT is the traditional focus of a college education, as defined by Newman. (IN THAT REGARD, another KEY TEXT IN YOUR ANTHOLOGY MAY WELL BE GOLEMAN'S ESSAY ON LEADERSHIP AND EMOTONIAL INTGELLIGENCE.) So, you may well want to choose a Victorian role model for this essay who exemplifies the kind of person you want to become.
THIS ESSAY (ALL OPTIONS) WILL BE GRADED PRIMARILY ACCORDING TO THE SWORD CRITERIA
As always, you can earn points by quotations from our course anthology and other sources. Citations (with page nos.) from actual, physical books from the library which are not available in any way on the internet will be worth twice as much.
Make sure you have a word count and follow all the other requirements, such as use of the U. of Chicago documentation system.
Finally, include in your folder not only the revised essay, but also the original essay, the one you uploaded for others to read and review. Mark the original essay to show how you revised in response to each reviewer's suggestions. Perhaps the most obvious way would be to assign a color to each reviewer and color code your original essay to show where you decided to make changes in response to that reviewer's suggestions. In addition to this color-coded original essay and your revised essay, include in your folder all of the reviews others made of your essay (with the color code indicated) and your self-evaluation.
