a paper analyzing Natalie Melas’ article ‘Forgettable Vacations and Metaphor in Ruins’

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3805541.pdf

Diagramming a Scholarly Article

What you will write: a paper analyzing Natalie Melas’ article ‘Forgettable Vacations and Metaphor in Ruins’.
How long it will be: Around 4 pages (double-spaced, size 12 font).
When it’s due: Tuesday by midnight.

What to do: following the steps below you will ‘diagram’ a scholarly article. That is to say, you will analyze not just what the article says but how it says it. Dismantling an article in this way will help you to understand the mechanics of scholarly writing by giving you a greater appreciation for how scholarly authors create arguments, position themselves within debates, and use literary and non-literary evidence.

What it’s worth: the assignment is 15% of your final grade.

This assignment asks you to ‘diagram’ the components of an essay on Walcott’s Omeros:

Melas, Natalie. ‘Forgettable Vacations and Metaphor in Ruins: Walcott’s Omeros.’ Callaloo, Volume 28, Number 1, Winter 2005, pp. 147-168

Most academic articles are written with an eye toward making a certain set of points clear to the reader, including: a distinct thesis; the critic’s method(s) (‘how’ they read the text in question, and how they think the text under analysis should be read) and field(s) of interest; current debates and trends in the field into which the critic is going to intervene; and examples being used to support the argument. You will be identifying some of these elements as they pertain to Melas’s essay as well as be asked to offer your own critique of her article.

If you are finding this a difficult article to understand, I would suggest starting with the conclusion, which normally restates the argument, then going back to the beginning and examining the introduction. The Melas article has a longer introduction than many articles (it’s around 7 pages). Then once you have that in place, examine the body paragraphs to see how they use evidence to support the main argument.

1. With the bibliographic citation above, use the library’s catalog to retrieve a copy of Melas’s essay. Read through it, keeping an eye out for the components outlined in bullet-point below in Step 2.
2. Your write up for this assignment will consist of multiple separate paragraphs (of around 200-300 words each) which outline the following categories. There should be one paragraph written per category, and you should quote from the essay as needed, with in-text parenthetical citations by page number (e.g. Melas notes that all critics acknowledgeOmeros is a ‘monumental achievement’ (147)). The categories are:

1. • Fields of Interest and Existing Debates—what are the fields of literary and cultural studies in which Melas is positioning herself as an interlocutor (i.e. if Melas were a member of U of H’s English department, how would she be listed on this website: https://www.uh.edu/class/english/people/specialty/? Note: she would appear in multiple categories)? Within those fields, what are some of the dominant ideas and trends she wants to challenge?—i.e., scholars in this field haven’t sufficiently discussed x; or they’ve spent too much time discussing y; or they always seem, specifically, to argue z, and Melas disagrees with z … etc.
   • Thesis—Explicitly quote the sentence or sentences in which Melas most clearly articulates the argument of her essay. If you feel there is more than one passage in the text that qualifies as a thesis statement, you may quote them both, but you should, in that case, say something about how the different passages you’ve chosen are related: i.e., are they saying pretty much the same thing but just in slightly different words? Or are they saying quite different things that you feel are both very important (perhaps indicating that Melas’s essay is best described as having more than one overall argument)? Provide a paraphrase of Melas’s thesis in your own terms (you should only be able to do this after reading the essay all the way through).
   • Examples—what are the specific examples from Walcott’s Omeros that Melas uses as evidence? An “example” here might refer to a specific passage or to a certain character or keyword from the text. There are a number of examples throughout the article. Just list as many you can, but then pick one of these examples and briefly summarize Melas’s “reading” of it—that is, summarize what she says about the textual evidence itself to describe it in a way that makes it support her thesis.
   • Further evidence: Melas’s essay could be understood as staging a dialogue between Walcott’s prose and his poetry. What is the conflict she sees between his poetry and his prose? Does she cite evidence from them in similar ways, or does she treat the genres differently? Summarize how Melas uses Walcott’s prose, and, as above, pick one of her examples and describe how she uses it to further her argument.
   • Vocabulary/Keywords: what are the key concepts that crop up regularly throughout this essay? For example, critical terms like ‘tourism’ and ‘imperialism’. Or literary terms such as the ‘rhetoric of disavowal’.  Give your best effort at a definition of each of these terms, and any others you think are particularly important. Be as clear as you can about a) why they each mean something different; but also b) how they relate to each other, specifically the relationship between tourism and imperialism

1. In a final, separate paragraph, offer one criticism you have of Melas’s article, or a follow-up question to it; this can just be a sentence or two. Do you find her evidence to be unconvincing? Do you disagree with the readings she offers of her evidence? Do the key concepts she’s put on the table seem to you ambiguous, either in their individual definitions or in the nature of their relationships to one another? Does the essay leave you with any provocative confusions or curiosities?