Dr. Katherine D. Harris
English 201 (Fall 2007)

Textual History Group Project

Practical Advice 2:
From Notes to Structure
 

Converting Notes to Presentation

Make sure to organize the material you gather into clear--and clearly understandable--units ( composition, publication, reception) and sub-units (early composition, revision in press, initial response, later response, and so forth).

Make sure that you don't just give us a play by play: "On June 2, the Quarterly came out, and the reviewer thought this, and this and this. Then on June 3, the Edinburgh came out, and the reviewer thought this, and this, and this." That's dreadful--and you will make your audience miserable if you do it. So don't.

Instead, organize your report on the reviews around their responses to particular aspects of Steinbeck's novel.  For example: "Though reviewers were generally favorable to Byron's poem, a number found his use of X offensive." Then follow up that topic sentence with specific examples from different reviews.

Make sure to give lots of specific details: "Of the 23 reviews, only 4 came out within two weeks of the initial publication. Those were a, b, c, and d. Of these 2--c and d--where highly critical, finding fault with Steinbeck's q which d described as "completely heretical."

Converting Notes to Paper

As the group reviews its materials, ask how much information should be provided for each of the areas required.

Organize this information into sections for the three areas. If using headings, however, try to offer more direction to the reader than just the words "composition," "publication" and "reception." Look at examples of this kind of writing--typically at the beginnings of editions of texts, like the introductions to novels--to see what techniques writers use for this kind of rhetorical task.