Essay 4: Voice and Persona

A brief work of historical imagination, due Friday, April 4. For this assignment, you will invent a persona and write in a voice other than your own. Your two-page paper will consist of two sections:

1. A concise (half-page) introduction to set the stage. Include a brief biosketch of the narrator, making sure you answer the questions WHO - WHAT - WHERE - WHEN - WHY. I suggest you put this blurb in italics at the top of your first page. For example:

   Nathan ben Reuben is a thirty-year-old Jewish scholar from the German city of Mainz. In 1185, he journeys to the city of Cordoba, in Muslim Spain, to look at some manuscripts. He stays there for three years, during which time he writes many letters home to his brother Isaac. In the following letter, dated 17 May 1187 [of course, you can get fancy and use the Jewish calendar if you want to be more historically accurate], he describes a meeting with a Jewish government official, and what occurred on the way home..."

2. Your narrative (1 to 1 1/2 pages). Keep in mind that your paper does not have to be a letter. It can be a journal entry, or a dialogue, or a sermon, or an interview--any format you come up with is probably fine, so be as creative as you wish. Your paper should be relevant, in some obvious way, to the topic of this course, but you may choose a modern persona if you have a good idea for one.

Pay special attention to the date you've chosen, because it makes a difference. As we know, a lot changed over the course of the middle ages; a letter from a tenth-century gay monk and a letter from a thirteenth-century gay monk would describe quite different scenarios. Moreover, you'll want to make your facts consistent with your dates. In the above example it would be absurd for me to have Nathan say something like "I remember when the Crusaders came through our town killing everyone"--he doesn't remember an incident that occurred sixty years before he was born.

Certain writing issues we have emphasized in this class (such as formal diction, thesis, argument, and structure) will probably not be relevant to this assignment. The voice and topic you choose will dictate the style and organization of your essay, and I will not, for instance, have a heart attack if your speaker uses contractions or colloquialisms. (Your persona must use apostrophes and punctuation correctly, however--even if he is supposed to be Angus the Simple-Minded Serf.)

Since this essay is a short one requiring colorful and creative description, certain other writing issues become paramount. Concision is perhaps your foremost concern--how can you be expressive, descriptive, and relevant within the confines of one page? Pay attention also to word choice; consult your dictionaries and thesauri to choose le mot juste (substituting, where you can, a single perfect word in place of an entire phrase). Finally, strive for realism and accuracy, weaving in concrete historical data and eschewing vague generalizations. G-d is in the details, folks.

Here are some of the suggestions we generated in class the other day. Feel free to send others to me or (better yet) to the fps-l discussion list.

• A formal letter from the Jewish communities requesting protection from a pope.
• A letter from a convert to Christianity. Note that it can be a sincere, zealous convert, perhaps trying to convince his family to convert as well, or an insincere convert who is secretly practicing his former religion.
• A letter home from an Andalusian (Iraqi, Palestinian, etc.) Jew describing how his cousins in England live. Or a letter from a European Jew describing conditions under Islam. Or correspondence between two Jews living under different religions.
• A letter (or journal entry) from a knight (or a townswoman, etc.) who has fallen into debt.
• A secret letter from one heretic to another.
• A love letter between two people of different faiths.
• A letter home from someone encountering another culture for the first time (a la Gerald of Wales).
• A firsthand account (approving or disapproving, by a victim or an observer) of a persecution.
• A letter to a local lord from a cleric, trying to assert his will in some matter.
• A letter from a gay monk (nun) to his (her) lover.

Possible essays which are not letters:

• A sermon, on any pertinent topic.
• A parody of a sermon, saint's life, propaganda piece, etc. Or a refutation of propaganda.
• A propaganda piece, against anyone. Specify in your intro what audience it is intended for and what the author wants to achieve.
• When little "Saint" William of Norwich was found dead in the woods, his uncle Godwin (a small-time priest) stood up in synod and accused the Jews of killing him. Apparently his listeners were rather skeptical, because nothing was done about it. You could write an imaginative transcript of the exchange that took place between Godwin and his fellow priests in synod.
• A Rolling-Stone-type interview with Saint Augustine, asking him why he advocates toleration of Jews in Christendom.
• "We're not Jewish": an editorial by a first-century Christian.
• A piece of vitriol from an unbalanced or hateful person. (Would you be capable of writing hate literature? The mere attempt to get inside the mind of a hate-filled person can be illuminating, because it shows how far removed such a mindset is from our own experience, our own assumptions.)

Use your imaginations freely. I look forward to reading these papers!

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