Choose a word whose meaning, as it is used in the early English text, doesn’t come across fully — nor, perhaps, even accurately — because of the way the class edition presents it.

Your word, for instance, might be glossed by the editor or translator in a way that misses a crucial meaning in, or flattens an ambiguity or complexity in, the early text.

Or it might not be glossed by the editor at all, leaving only the present-day English cognate of that word as a guide, and maybe an insufficient one, to its meaning in the early text.

Or it might be translated in a way that sacrifices sense for poetic flow, or poetic flow for sense, in a way that might be best understood and unpacked when reconnected to the original wording. Or it might be something else entirely! This is an assignment that requires you to think with specificity, not generality, in a truly close reading. 

Choose your word with this full essay prompt in mind. You’ll likely have to try out a few words before you find the one that works — leave time; plan ahead. 

Make sure you are dealing with the word as it appeared in the earliest known version of your text (distinguishing between early texts and modern mediations is one of the fundamentals of ENG 202!).

If the word you’ve chosen appears more than once in the text, you should focus your attention on one usage in particular — but you’ll have to take its other appearances into account in your understanding of that one usage. If the word you’ve chosen appears only once, that’s fine too.

Look up your word in the relevant scholarly dictionary (we’ll introduce each during our class sessions): the OED for Blazing World and later Robin Hood texts; the OED and MED for earlier Robin Hood texts and the Canterbury Tales; the DOE for Beowulf (which rules out any word that doesn’t begin with the letters A through I).

But remember: your reader can already look words up in a dictionary. This is not a dictionary report: don’t waste space enumerating every possible meaning of your word; rather, hone in on what you want to argue about the word’s meanings as used in this particular case.

Perhaps you may see something that even the dictionary has missed. Consult my guide to using dictionaries if it helps.

For this assignment, you are not required to interact with the early text in its original medium (that is, by referring to scans of the original printing, or the original manuscript); the original media will be made available to you in class and you can certainly try to work with original media if you wish, to the degree that your argument depends on something specifically visible in that medium (I’ve had one student who discovered that a key word in a class text had been transcribed incorrectly from the original!) — but all you’re required to work with is the transcribed early text that appears in your class edition.

This is not a compare-and-contrast essay: you are considering how one modern edition or translation handles a particular word. (You may, however, want to take other editions/translations into consideration as a way of better understanding the one you’ve focused on).

Every TA will evaluate and grade student work differently, with different values in mind.

However, I will ask TAs to reserve grades above 79 for essays that truly convince them about something that they didn’t believe or know before, in a way that enriches their understanding of the text (an essay that does so isn’t guaranteed an 80, but you can’t get an 80 or higher without doing so).

Beyond that, I will ask TAs to keep in mind the following criteria for grading:

1. Specificity. Base your essay in close reading, teasing out ambiguities; after that, choose one very small thing as the primary subject of your hypothesis.

2. Clarity. Use as many words as are necessary, arranged with sensible grammar in a straightforward style, to get your ideas across.

3. Rigor. An essay should be (not contain) a [hypo]thesis. Say only what is actually true; establish and defend that truth with (and only with) stringent logic.

4. Innovation. Develop and position your hypothesis in relation to what has already been said about/around your primary subject. Disagree, deepen, destabilize.

5. Precision. Unlike a literary text, your essay should be unambiguous. Every word counts: choose the words that communicate your ideas most exactly.

6. Tone. Your writing should come off as decisive, warm, and (in terms of formality) business casual. Know your audience.

7. Focus. Organize your essay according to the logical progression of its argument; cut anything that is not structurally necessary to that argument.

8. Stakes. Argue a thesis that you actually believe and care about — find what matters in the specific item you’ve taken as your primary subject.

9. Complexity. Never simplify; always ramify. Look for, and incorporate, evidence that disproves or troubles your hypothesis.

10. Depth. Dig into your narrow primary subject. Uncover what lies beneath what lies beneath the obvious. Read against the grain.

11. Economy. Use as few words as are necessary to get your ideas across. Cut empty wordage; be sincere.

Conceive of your scholarly writing as public work. For your target audience, you should imagine a group of graduate students and intelligent bloggers who have read your text once, and recently, with full comprehension of its basic meaning, but who do not have the text open in front of them; they have not read any of your supplemental texts. For a deeper dive into my essay criteria — and some very helpful tips on writing essays — click here.