Imitation is the Sincerest Form of ... Learning?

Duncan Moench — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 12:26:59 +0000

Author:

B. D. Moench

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By Traitrnator

Traditional Art / Drawings / Portraits & Figures

Awhile back I remember reading that, early in his career, Hunter S. Thompson began every morning typing word for word full chapters of The Great Gatsby. At one point in his early twenties, apparently, he’d typed out the whole book multiple times. As with most things Thompson, his friends and colleagues were baffled. When asked “why?” Thompson said “I want to know what it feels like to write something great.”

Now there’s two ways to respond to this: 1) Thompson—who was just as famous for his drug use as he was his pioneering “new” journalism style—was a lunatic and this habit represents just one more quirk to ad to a landfill of quirks or 2) Thompson, who, succeeded in spite (rather than because) of his drug use, had indeed stumbled onto something.

As you’ve probably guessed at this point, I chose the later; and, I decided to test out the thesis on my students. In my 309K course, after their first full paper assignment, many students were struggling with rhetorical analysis. As per usual, many just couldn’t quite get their heads around how analysis is supposed to look. What do you expect? What am I supposed to say? How is analysis different than opinion? What do you mean by “focus on the rhetoric”?

In the past, I’ve found that the best way to answer these questions is to meet with students one-on-one and illustrate, with concrete examples, how their papers are polemical rather than analytical or evaluative rather than substantive. After a bit of instruction most students tend to get the hang of rhetorical analysis and turn out decent work by the middle of the semester. But, with Thompson on my mind, I wondered if there might not be a better, and quicker, way to give students the feel for rhetorical analysis. So, I decided to ask my students to do something — something they, surely, have never been asked to do by a teacher before: copy another person’s work word for word.

I asked my students to take out Lunsford’s Everything’s An Argument (8th ed.), turn to page 108, and read David Brooks’s Times column “It’s Not about You.” After giving them a few minutes to complete the reading, I then asked them to read student Rachel Kolb’s analysis of Brooks’s essay entitled “Understanding Brooks’s Binaries.” Once they finish reading, I ask them to log-in to their nearest computer and open up a Word file and then type the piece word for word. Most students were shocked and I had to repeat myself multiple times.

“Yes, I really want you to copy her essay word-for-word, and, then print it out with your name on the top….give it the title "Imitation Exercise."”

As the class began typing, I surveyed the room and explained that I felt typing Kolb’s words—which are by no means perfect, but certainly competent—would help them not only see, but also feel, how analysis worked on the page.

I started the exercise with about 15 minutes left in the class and most of the students weren’t able to finish in time, so I allowed them to send it to me before the next class session. So far, most of the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of my students have commented that the exercise really helped them get a better feel for what was expected in rhetorical analysis. I have to say that their paper revisions were significantly improved across the board, and, in many cases far more than I expected. It’s worth also mentioning, that, thus far, no students have confused the intention of the exercise in any fundamental way. I haven’t received any papers copying whole phrases from Kolb’s work or, even cutting too close to her text, which, really, would be almost useless, since she is of course analyzing a completely different piece of rhetoric. I highly recommend giving an “imitation exercise” a try.

If you already require Everything’s An Argument, Kolb’s paper won’t require any printing; an exemplary work from a past student, or the edited student essays reprinted in the back of the textbook Critical Situations would work just as well. The key is making sure to have the original piece they analyzed to pair with the paper.

If you give it a try (and it works) don’t thank me, thank HST … and, if it fails spectacularly, please also direct the necessary blame his way as well :)

Good Writers Borrow, Great Writers ...

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:03:03 +0000

Author:

Cleve Wiese

Image Credit:

Joel Perlman

In a recent blog post, Alex Reid makes the not uncommon argument that if the Humanities are to “survive” this era of fiscal belt tightening, scholars must realize that “the traditional arguments” for their relevance “are not timeless,” and must adapt to changing “historical and material conditions.” One of those traditional arguments is, of course, the literary canon itself, and English teachers--particularly those with a self-consciously “digital” emphasis--are constantly faced with the challenge of making “timeless” texts relevant to students living, reading, and writing in dynamic and collaborative mediums.

Reid’s pragmatic answer for Composition Studies is to focus on the real-world effects of student writing, “with an eye toward fueling our own productivity or invention.” But why not focus on literature’s inventive potential as well? The mark of sublime writing, according to Longinus, is that it makes readers feel as if they had written it themselves. So maybe we should let students actually take ownership of great writing by reconceptualizing skills such as close reading in basically inventive rather than analytical terms.

What I’m suggesting is imitation – but imitation with difference. We could take a cue from classical pedagogues such as Quintilian and have students rewrite or even perform specific passages from literature in different styles or forms, for different real or imagined contexts and audiences (poetry into prose, past into present, etc.). Or better yet, have them recreate passages in entirely new mediums: For example, a scene from a novel could be “imitated” in multimodal form as a performance, video, animation, Photoshop image, even a game. By using the text as cue for invention rather than stable artifact, this kind of transposition would actually force students to focus more closely on the text itself, determining exactly what – at the level of style – constitutes its specific effects on readers and how those effects can be recreated in a different style, format, and medium. At any rate, that was Quintilian’s argument.

Earlier this semester, I used a similar kind of transposition process to introduce the concept of close reading to my own E314: "Banned Books and Novel Ideas" class. We were studying “Howl” and had recently read an essay about the influence of visual art, Cezanne in particular, on Ginsburg’s poetic style. For a short writing assignment, I sent the class out to photograph a sculpture or painting somewhere on campus and then asked them to transpose part of the poem in the “style” of their chosen visual work (instead of the Cezanne “eyeball kick”-style Ginsburg claims to have been channeling). For the accompanying write-up, students analyzed the relationship between stylistic aspects of their chosen visual art and the specific decisions they made in their transposition. I’m not sure the assignment worked quite as planned, but I am sure that 1) the class enjoyed it and 2) it produced some interesting writing. And I think it would work even better if the process was reversed and students started with the text, imitating in a visual or multimodal medium rather than the other way around. Which is my plan for this assignment in the Spring.

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Imitation is the Sincerest Form of ... Learning?

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Good Writers Borrow, Great Writers ...

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