metAdiscourse on “east of the west” by miroslav penkov
Paper instructions:
Discussion: For your second formal paper, I ask that you craft a metadiscourse using one short story from our anthology.
As discussed in class, metadiscourse is “talking about talk.” Identify and explicate how a writer creates his or her work. You may go about this task in one of several ways:
*You may identify and explicate a structural motif used in a story. An example used in class is Anthony Doerr’s use of ellipses, the story arc, and the image of the stock crash of 1929 in his story “The Deep”.
*You may identify and explicate a series of literary or rhetorical elements. Examples might include a particular grammar or punctuation style choice an author makes, metaphor or simile choices, imagery choices, logos, ethos, or pathos choices, etc.
*You may identify a cultural, historical, social, psychological (or other similar) perspective and explicate how the perspective informs a story or character from a story. An example used in class is Yuyun Li’s use of the historical understanding of women and marriage in twentieth century China in her novella “Kindness.”
As part of this assignment, you must include at least two good outside sources to support your argument. Be both accurate and creative in the use of your outside sources. You may use another literary work to support your claim. For example, you may discover that Yuyun Li has written several other stories and novels that can be found through our library…
As you craft your paper, consider the significance of your primary claim or thesis. Your thesis should be clear, unique, interesting, challenging and/or controversial. Try to move beyond the obvious to the truly insightful. The strength of your overall argument relies on the textual evidence you use from the story to support and “prove” your thesis.
