Which of the pieces assigned this week is most appealing to you, which is least appealing to you, and why?
Read the following texts, paying special attention in each to the ways that gender and the relations between the sexes are figured, and also to each author’s underlying (not necessarily explicit) ideas about gender and the sexes, and about love, sex, and marriage:Anne Bradstreet, “A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment,” 124-125Judith Sargent Murray, 406-407, “On the Equality of the Sexes,” 408-409 (just the poem, not the rest!)Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee,” 738-739Poe, “Ligeia,” 739-749Walt Whitman [Section 11 from “Song of Myself”], “Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,” 1095Whitman [Section 24 from “Song of Myself”], “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,” 1105-1107Emily Dickinson, “Wild nights – Wild nights!,” 1254Dickinson, “I never lost as much but twice,” 1250Dickinson, “I cannot live with you,” 1266-1267Dickinson, “My life closed twice before it’s close,” 1271(200 words) in response to this question: Which of the pieces assigned this week is most appealing to you, which is least appealing to you, and why? (Your reasons don’t have to be concerned mainly with the writers’ ideas about love, sex, or gender; they might have to do with the text’s imagery, style, tone, feel, etc.)
