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Essay Instructions: Journal Entry Ten: Look at Ginsberg's "Howl." How would you characterize the world that Ginsberg describes? Is he being accurate or is he using hyperbole (exaggeration)? How does he demonstrate the postmodern beliefs of combining fiction and nonfiction, multiculturalism, and the experimentation of new forms? MINIMUM OF 200 WORDS

Journal Entry Eleven: In "Cathedral", what is the narrator's problem with connecting? Is he connected with his wife. Do they understand each other? What is the significance of the blind man's lack of vision? Does this represent anything? How are liquor and marijuana used in this story--what to the help do or prevent from happening? Finally, what is Carver trying to say in the ending when the two men draw the cathedral together? MINIMUM OF 200 WORDS

Journal Entry Twelve: Using a story/or poem from this weeks readings, please identify two major themes and discuss. Can any of these themes be found in your life? Why? Why Not?
MINIMUM OF 200 WORDS

******** These entries should discuss your reactions to the readings. They may be reflections on the ways readings remind you of real life situations. They may express your joys or frustrations with the literature. They may discuss occasions when you shared your thoughts about your American Literature readings with your friends, co-workers, or children.

Essay Instructions: Literary Criticism using "Cultural Poetics" (or New Historicism) approach, exploring the life and times of Allen Ginsberg, AND his book "Howl" AND the "Beat" era.

It is very important to include a bio on Ginsberg, a "Cultural Poetics" Criticism on his life and work and the era of Beat Literature.

Essay Instructions: This paper is for American Literature in the 20th Century. I need in addition to the 8 pages, at least 8 source in a modified annotated bibliography format - I only need quotes derived from the source in the annotation, no analysis of the source is necessary. MLA Format is required

some ideas for the content: the examination of moloch in howl, oedipus, Jung's archetypes, the writings of Joseph Campbell

I have some research done that I will email later

Essay Instructions: Assignment #1, which will be due on February 1st, will be a short poetry analysis, worth 15% of your course mark.


In the interests of balancing our prose readings with a look at the seminal poetry of the Beat Generation, our first assignment asks you to locate and analyze an American poem first published between 1944 and 1966 by one of the recognized figures of the Beat Generation, Black Mountain Poets, or San Francisco Renaissance movements. Consider the poem as an aspect of a new vision for America: the search for identity, a manifesto for shaping something new out of the country and society, a voice broadening and complicating what it meant to be American. How are the concerns of the movement (civil rights, feminism, popular culture, the shadow of war, spirituality, Eastern religions, rejection of capitalism and conformity) informing the poem? Choose one poem, and begin your assignment.

Allen Ginsberg?s Howl (1956), Kaddish (1961) , Lawrence Ferlinghetti?s A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), Jack Kerouac?s Mexico City Blues (1959), William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, John Wieners, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, or Michael McClure would be suitable. Though the best-known poets of the movement are all male, there are notable female poets, among them Diane di Prima, Denise Levertov, Joanne Kyger, Anne Waldman, Elise Cowan, Lenore Kandel, and Ruth Weiss. Since several of the female Beats did not begin publishing until later, the 1966 cut-off need not apply to their work. Black Mountain poets include Larry Eigner, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Paul Blackburn, Hilda Morley, John Wieners, Joel Oppenheimer, Denise Levertov, Jonathan Williams and Robert Creeley. San Francisco Renaissance Poets include Allen Ginsberg, Brother Antoninus (William Everson), Robin Blaser, Jack Spicer, James Broughton, Madeline Gleason, Helen Adam, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bruce Boyd, Kirby Doyle, Richard Duerden, Philip Lamantia, Ebbe Borregaard, and Lew Welch. Many of these poems and related works have been made available on-line, and should be easy to find. For instance, the texts of John Cage?s Indeterminacy pieces (1959) can be found here: http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/

Evaluation criteria
? The information must be relevant, accurate, ethical, and complete for the circumstances.
? Scholarly sources may be used for your evidence, but are not required for this assignment. Borrowed information must be correctly documented in MLA style. Sources must not be in footnotes. Papers without a Works Cited page will not be graded: even if you have no secondary sources, you should include your primary texts on this page.
? The organization and layout should follow the research essay conventions, with formal language throughout. Avoid slang, contractions, and personal anecdotes. This does not apply to the fiction option.
? The paper must be 1200-1500 words in length. Please provide a word count at the end. Papers under 1000 words or over 1800 will not be graded.
? Good sequencing makes your essay easy to read. Consider your argument?s outline.
? The language use in the essay or story is your own. Borrowed wording has been summarized or paraphrased and has been documented as in-text citations.
? Sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and vocabulary are correct.
? A professional or original style adds to the interest, value and credibility of your essay.