Sequence 5: 19th-Century British & American Lit.
Short Essays

“'"Don't I see stuck up everywhere / Abundant proof that cultured
taste / Has Beauty for its only care, / And upon Truth
no thought to waste?'"' (ll.389-92)
Robert Browning's "Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial" (1876)

Short Essay responses should . . .

• include the prompt to which your essay responds at the head of your essay so I needn't look it up myself.
• deliver a structured argument: these will not resemble personal journal entries, blog-style writing, or stream-of-consciousness reflections. Essays should be tightly organized, with main points logically ordered. The whole should be framed by a creative, short introduction and some kind of conclusion (do not wrap up by summarizing your main points).
• demonstrate creativity: these exercises are all about effective, persuasive argumentation, and not at all about giving me some "correct" answer you think I want to hear.
• pursue a narrowly argued thesis: your essays should move in a very specific direction. Do not attempt to touch on every possible idea or piece of supporting evidence.
• provide adequate evidence: use your own ideas, textual references (with MLA-style page or line-number citations). As concerns these essays, there is no such thing as an incorrect argument--only an insufficiently supported one.
• articulate your argument in around 400-500 words (definitely no more than 600) and show signs of careful revision
• in the case of Path 2 essays, be sent to me via email by Saturday at 11:59 p.m.
• evince polish: essays should show signs of careful revision. Go here for an explanation of my color-coded comments.
• Marchbanks' Pet Peeves
  • avoid references to yourself (no first-person singular or plural pronouns); allow your claims to stand on their own
  • the titles of novels, plays, paintings, and films should be italicized; the titles of short stories, poems, and essays should be placed within quotation marks
  • always include the year of publication/release in parentheses following the first (and only first) mention of a given work's title
  • capitalize "The Bible," "God," and "Christianity," even if you don't believe in God or consider The Bible to be the word of God, since they are all proper nouns. If you prefer referring to "G-d" in this abbreviated way, that's fine too.
  • place the period following a quoted passage after the page citation in parentheses, not before the parentheses. Never place a comma at the end of a quoted passage unless the structure of the sentence demands one.
  • use only sparingly words like "all," "every," "always," "none," and "never." Don't put a bullseye on your argument by over-generalizing. Allow for the exceptions that often exist.
  • avoid such vague, nondescript adjectives as the following, since they add nothing specific to your claim: "interesting," "unique," " "incredible," "fascinating," etc.
  • when recounting events from a story, please use the present (not past) verb tense to bring the events to life. Definitely do not switch back and forth--without good reason--between present and past verb tenses
  • spell correctly all names (characters, authors, artists, etc.)
  • use "who" instead of "that" when referring to people
  • employ a hyphen between two adjectives working together as a single modifier of a noun
  • 
    

"Cliff Dwellers" (1913)
George Bellows

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.eLadyofShalott_COLLGdu