Short Paper #1

Posted on February 2, 2006

English 131, Spring 2006
Short Essay #1
Due Friday, February 17 by 4PM (hard copies only, delivered to the English Department: 400 Old Mill)

On the back of lime green assignment sheet that was handed out in class on February 2 (please see me if you don't have a copy of it) you will find a discussion of the rabbinic exegetical practice known as midrash. Basically, midrash is a form of interpretation in which the reader engages deeply, and actively, in the Biblical text, supplying the "flesh" to the narrative skeleton with which we are so often presented in the Hebrew Bible. Another discussion of midrash says, "In our modern tradition we tend to think of texts as documents or as formal or aesthetic objects--writings that we try to analyze or to operate on at a distance. But such distance is just what midrash seeks to overcome. Midrash illustrates …that the understanding of a text can never remain simply a state of intellectual agreement with what is said; it is never simply a mental state or the conceptual grasp of the mental state of another. Understanding shows itself only in action in the world" (Gerald L. Bruns, "Midrash and Allegory: The Beginnings of Scriptural Interpretation," in Alter and Kermode, The Literary Guide to the Bible [Harvard UP, 1987], 629).

Your task for the assignment is to compose your own midrash of a part of the Hebrew Bible--a pericope, a part of a pericope, a phrase, etc--that inspires you to "act" on it. How would you tell the story that, to your mind, might have happened between the lines of the text and that illustrates your particular interpretation of that narrative unit?

You can write your midrash as an essay, a story, a dialogue, a poem, a play--whatever written form in which you can best express yourself. With the exception of the poem option (which you should talk to me about individually), I would expect that you would write 5-7 double-spaced pages.

The details then:

On February 17 by 4PM, you will turn in to the English Department office (400 Old Mill) a paper of at least 5 pages in length that is titled, double-spaced, has its pages properly stapled together (no plastic covers please) and has been very carefully proofread. No electronic submissions please.

There will be no extensions on this assignment. Late papers will be docked a grade a day (i.e. from a B to a B-).

Please see me if you have any questions: my office hours are MWF 1-2:30. E-mail is lschnell@uvm.edu.