Writing assignment#2

We are again looking at the connections between our authors. During the last weeks you have read Bacon, Peirce and Sophocles' Oedipus . For Saturday we would like you to again write one carefully composed paragraph exploring the connections between any two of these three works. The paragraph may be as long as you wish, but should be kept to the inclusion of a thesis statement (making your argument about the claim), your evidence (quotes, references to the text) and explanation of those quotes and their relevance to your claim, and a conclusion about what you have proven. Try to use the responses to your first paragraph to improve the writing in the second.

 

Please use citation form and post by 8PM to your papers folder and in the public papers folder if you wish to have comments publicly posted.

 

For those who are still confused about a thesis statement, please look at the following:

 

What is a thesis statement in a critical paper?

A thesis statement is a claim or assertion. It is a conclusion which you have derived and which you will use as the basis of your paper. You may think of it as "the conclusion I have drawn about the subject after doing my reading."

 

• It should be arguable but provable.
• It should be debatable
• It may (and should) not cover all of the information you have dealt with in your reading, but rather only focus on one portion of that reading.
• It should deal with the material covered and not "feelings" you have after having read the material ( the work and not the world as we say.
  In other words, you may come to feel after reading Nutting, that your education up to this time has been inadequate and so you choose to write a paper about your education or education in general which does not follow Nutting's precepts. This will not work as a thesis paper for this academic assignment because it removes the the paper from the role of synthesizing and analyzing what we have read, to the world outside of these readings. This is not the purpose of these critical papers which is to focus on the author's and the connections between them.