Constructive Criticism

Okay, I got my proposal back from Dr. John Kilgore, my lit. pofessor, and it was returned with some very interesting comments. I thought I'd post them for my readers' amusement.

Dr. Kilgore's "Constructive Criticism":

'A potentially very good project I think but a bit dangerously diffuse at present. In the first paragraph you pose four questions but leave all of them floating or hanging without subordinating one to the other or interconnecting them. Better to decide which ONE is your real question and let the others (insofar as they fit) be subordinated to them and generated out of them in a logical way, not just turned to seemingly at random.

E.g., if "Was Paine a Romantic?" is your central question, then the next logical question might be "What's a Romantic?," "For example look at Blake"-- and the comparison to Blake would have a more specific edge and relevance. You'd be doing it not just to do it but by way of developing the larger question, what is romantic and what's not in Paine.

The first question "Why was Paine so controversial?" seems so broad maybe it doesn't belong here? To a great extent it's simply a non-question (he was expressly and deliberately a revolutionary, so of course he had to be controversial). It could be a guiding question I suppose if you intended to show that many of his ideas were actually accepted when others espoused them, or if you intended this as a reflection on the nature of controversy-- but right now it doesn't seem well-related to the other questions.

I don't think the Songs of Innocence will give you much insight into Blake's political views, at all. Better to turn to secondary sources for that I think, starting with the Blake Dictionary, then perhaps introductory studies of the period.

BTW, if you wanted to simplify, I think "Blake and Pained" could be a perfectly good topic, though you'd need to be sure you went well beyond what Damon [author of primary course text] already gives us. But the topic might well lead to a focused and do-able journals search. Ending up with 5 or 6 articles on the two as your research base could be a good position to be in, if the articles are full and authoritative and more recent than Damon...'

My Interpretation: I think what Dr. K is saying is that I need to pare this sucker waayy down. So, that's what I'm going to do. Wow! My thinking is "a bit dangerously diffuse (read: all over the place)." Shocking, right?