This class believes that the most direct route to strength in prose-making is through broad and informed reading. Our method then, will be to walk for awhile alongside master practitioners of the essayic form, from several counties, communities, and centuries, aiming therethrough to detect the diversity of schema available to fellow travelers. There’s a menu-button at the top of most word-processing programs called “reveal formatting,” or “show invisibles;” that’s one thing we’re after in this class: to make such revelations and sightings part of our writerly accoutrements.

In order to help situate the essays we’re reading artifactually (as we attempt to situate our own writing similarly) we’ll investigate, group-wise, a handful of “great” essayists, which investigations will serve as de facto subjects of inquiry, and as stones against which--Michel Foucault says language is for cutting--we sharpen our (mightier?) swords.

Prerequisites:

While 281 has no formal prerequisite, this is an intermediate writing course, and instructors expect entering students to know how to formulate claims, integrate evidence, demonstrate awareness of audience, and structure coherent sentences, paragraphs and essays. Thus we strongly encourage students to complete an introductory (100 level) writing course before enrolling in English 281.