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Tortoise Tuesday: Writing About Music

BY Writing Center

On recent Tortoise Tuesdays, Isabella, Ellie, and Paige have all analyzed music or musical theater in terms of the writing lexicon. Writing about music is, of course, a discipline in its own right – and often one that requires special attention to orienting, key terms, and other lexicon items to ensure that the writing is clear to readers who may not have extensive prior knowledge. Zachary Woolfe’s recent New York Times article on the opera singer Anita Rachvelishvili masterfully combines technical insights with explanations and examples, demonstrating how good writing can make any topic accessible to a non-expert audience.

Woolfe starts with a specific example: a recent rehearsal of the opera Adriana Lecouvreur. He gives the background information necessary for any reader to make sense of his description and then transitions smoothly to the real focus of the article: Rachvelishvili herself.

“Late in the third act of “Adriana Lecouvreur,” Francesco Cilea’s irresistible potboiler of an opera, the vicious Princesse de Bouillon and Adriana, an actress, square off at a party, rivals for the love of the dashing Maurizio.

In the tumult, Maurizio makes a move toward Adriana, but the princess stops him. “Restate,” she commands, ordering him to stay by her.

On a recent morning deep within the Metropolitan Opera, where a new production of “Adriana” starring Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala opens on New Year’s Eve, the Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili made the three syllables of “restate” a paradox: a gorgeous snarl.

Diving into her chest voice, but not milking it or pushing too hard, her tone stayed round, warm and not all that loud, an iron fist in a cashmere glove. Listening, you felt like Maurizio, pinned to your seat by her sound and authority.”

Throughout the article, Woolfe continues to provide the information necessary to make it comprehensible, defining key terms as they come up. He avoids doing so in a cumbersome, didactic way, instead providing explanations as necessary. For example, in the introduction, Woolfe chooses not to give a direct translation of Rachvelishvili’s line “Restate” (“stay”), instead describing what her character is doing with that command.

When writing in a specialized discipline, especially one that, like opera, already is perceived as unwelcoming to casual participants, it can be hard to find a balance between providing not enough information or too much. Students are sometimes unsure whether to include a dedicated “key words” section at the beginning of a paper, at the risk of overwhelming the reader or causing confusion if some terms don’t reappear until much later in the paper, or to explain each term as it becomes necessary. Woolfe’s article demonstrates an exemplary approach to the issue.

–Rosamond van Wingerden ’20

Source:
Zachary Woolfe: “A Young Singer Takes the Opera World by Storm.” The New York Times. 28 December, 2018.

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Thesis and Structure in Ravel’s Bolero

BY Writing Center

A few days ago, I was having lunch with a friend of mine, an oboist, and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero came up in the conversation.

“How in the world,” she asked, after we had talked about it for a few minutes, “does Ravel build a fifteen minute piece out of so little music at all?”

I had never thought about it before, but once my friend brought it up, we both agreed it was not an easy question to answer. The Bolero has three main motifs — three theses, if you like. First comes the motor rhythm on the snare, which begins in the first bar of the piece and continues virtually unchanged until the end:

The second motif, introduced by the flute, is the primary major melody:

The third and final motif — which my friend and I affectionately called the snake-charmer theme — is introduced by the bassoon and weaves in and out of the major-key passages:

The Bolero is composed entirely of the interplay between these three motifs, varying only the instrumentation. Though, in a written work of comparable length — say, ten pages — three distinct “theses” would almost certainly be excessive, in a piece of music, to have only three motifs carry an entire piece is almost unheard of. Listen to a Beethoven symphony, and you will hear countless themes introduced, and then varied in key and texture until they are almost unrecognizable. Even in a Bach sonata, the epitome of simplicity, the structure is relatively involved, bursting with Escher-like variations that turn one motif into the next without giving you time to notice how the change came about. There is no such variation in the Bolero. And yet somehow, there seems nothing strained or contrived about the piece. With its gradual increase in intensity from the voice of a single snare at pianissimo to a full orchestra at forte, the Bolero holds our attention from the first bar to the last.

By its simple yet flawless execution, the Bolero reminds us that writing of any kind — analytic or creative, literary or musical — need not be complex to be compelling. While there is something to be said for the “broad”, “multi-faceted”, or “comprehensive” thesis, such a thesis is also very easy to mishandle. Too often, we lose control of our argument in the rush to say everything at once. Through the understated structure of the Bolero, we see that it is sometimes better — though certainly, no less difficult — to confine ourselves to the exploration of a single theme. As anyone who has listened all the way to Ravel’s raucous final measures will attest, the simplest construction is often the strongest of all.

–Isabella Khan ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Methodology in Hamilton

BY Writing Center

With the Grammys on Sunday, Hamilton has been on my mind. While Annabel Barry ’19 has previously commented on motive in Hamilton, I’d like to focus this week’s Tortoise Tuesday on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s methodology in telling Alexander Hamilton’s story.

What is most intriguing about Hamilton is of course, its subject: America’s “forgotten” founding father. But a little over 3 years after Hamilton’s release, a Google Trends comparison between Alexander Hamilton and his counterparts shows that he is anything but “forgotten”. Interest clearly spiked in August 2015, as Hamilton made its Broadway debut.

If Lin-Manuel Miranda’s motive in writing Hamilton was to draw attention to Alexander Hamilton’s story, then he has clearly succeeded where others have not. After all, Alexander Hamilton has been the subject of hundreds of thousands of biographies and documentaries. What sets Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work apart is his creative methodology, specifically his use of the musical format.

Starting with a supposedly forgotten subject, as opposed to a more familiar figure, such as George Washington, Miranda had his work cut out for him. The audience enters unassuming, possibly skeptical of a historical musical set in the 1700s (that is, if they haven’t read the glowing reviews yet). However, using a musical — not just any musical but a rap musical — Miranda inserts vibrant elements of artistry, nearly disguising the fact that, at its core, Hamilton is a historical account.

What makes a musical a good methodology? Musicals are similar to television in the sense that you typically don’t expect or wish to gain a history lesson from watching an episode of your favorite drama. However, unlike television, musicals are able to subtly insert otherwise dry historical information in the form of song lyrics. Hamilton capitalizes on this opportunity, leaving the audience with a number of catchy, jazzy, eclectic songs to listen to on repeat, lyrics that easily rival even the “best” of rap, and most importantly, without even realizing it… a newfound interest in and knowledge about Alexander Hamilton.

While not everyone may be able to write and produce a musical to communicate their R3 or senior thesis, I challenge you to think more openly about methodology in your next piece of academic or personal writing. What is the best, most engaging way to communicate your research, your analysis, your argument, your interests? It may just be a musical.

— Ellie Shapiro ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Orienting in Hadestown

BY Writing Center

As an artist and a scholar, I am excited when I see the writing lexicon paralleled in creative works. Recently, I noted the use of orientation techniques in the musical Hadestown, a retelling of the myths of Persephone, Hades, Orpheus, and Eurydice scheduled to hit Broadway this spring. The narrator of Hadestown introduces the audience to the musical’s world just as good writers orient their readers: by providing foundational information and defining key terms.

The narrator, Hermes, orients the audience by providing information necessary to understanding the play. Hermes establishes three essential facts in his first sung lines: 1) the road to hell is a railroad line, 2) times are hard, and 3) the audience is entering “a world of gods and men.” These facts are crucial to understanding everything else from that point on, so it makes sense that this information appears first, before the details of the plot are introduced. Similarly, a writer must establish foundational information regarding the world of the scholarship before introducing the specifics of the paper.

Hermes then introduces the audience to key characters, identifying them and briefly explaining their roles in the story. For example, Hermes introduces himself as “a man with feathers on his feet who would help you to your final destination.” The audience now knows who Hermes is and what purpose he serves. This introduction of characters can be likened to key term definition. A writer must define the important terms used in a paper so their meanings are clear to any reader. Hermes defines himself at the outset in order to establish what “Hermes” means in this play. The audience may have different understandings of the mythological Hermes or have no prior knowledge at all, just as a reader may not be familiar with a key term or understand it in the context of the paper. Defining himself allows Hermes to establish his role in this context clearly.

Hermes’ introduction of important characters is also analogous to the way a writer orients the reader to important scholars who appear in the paper. In the introduction, the writer usually provides a brief explanation of scholars’ arguments or roles in the paper, just as Hermes explains the basics of his role in the show. Whether viewed as an introduction of key terms or relevant scholars, these brief introductions serve the larger purpose of orienting the audience. The opening song in Hadestown thus functions as an introductory paragraph, building a necessary foundation for the rest of the piece.

— Paige Allen ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Motive in Screenwriting

BY Writing Center

This semester I am taking “Introduction to Screenwriting: Adaptation.” It is my first time experimenting with screenwriting, and as a Writing Center Fellow who works closely with Princeton’s lexicon, I have been very struck by how screenwriting, and screenwriting for adaptive works particularly, relies so heavily on the same process of identifying a strong motivating question to frame one’s work. In my first-year writing seminar, I remember constantly being told to look for a puzzle in the primary source: to seek out a point of tension, or contradiction, or even confusion which I could then aim to reconcile or explain through an academic analysis of the text, as informed by what other scholars had to say. This is what is called a motive. At first, I definitely found this notion of finding a motive to be a somewhat difficult concept to grasp.

However, now that I am more comfortable with looking for puzzles while I read and developing motivating questions which arise out of those puzzles, it has been rewarding to see how this same process is used in creative writing. As its title suggests, “Introduction to Screenwriting: Adaptation” introduces students to screenwriting techniques for adaptation as we work to dramatize true stories for the screen. While the stories we are adapting are true, a lot of our class discussions center around how to go about developing our own perspective on those stories through the specific choices we make regarding the translation of stories to the screen.

In tackling our first assignment, we had to write a short screenplay based on an article we had read. Our professor instructed us to look for gaps in the article, moments that puzzled us or confused us or that left us with questions, as she explained that our own unique adaption could arise in how we imaginatively chose to formulate an answer to those puzzling, troubling, or not entirely reconciled moments of the story from the article. Thinking about the process of adaption in this way, as motive, has proven helpful for me. When I read through my article I was looking closely for a moment in which I felt the timeline progress from Point A to Point B at the same time that some sense of tension or confusion remained in terms of the space between those two points. This between space is what I chose to further develop in my own screenplay.

Taking a screenwriting class has really shown me a whole new context in which motive can be at play. Just as I begin writing academic essays by looking for a puzzle from which I can formulate a motivating question, I have found myself going through this same process, almost in a more direct way, when working through my creative writing assignments, which has been really exciting!

— Danielle Hoffman ’20

Conclusion

Balance of Legal and Personal Influences on Constitutional Judgments: Reversals and Redefinition of Precedent

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In her paper, Katja considers the reversal of legal precedent as the result of justices’ personal considerations. She argues that even when Supreme Court justices attempt to separate their judgments from their personal values, personal influence on their decisions is inevitable, for which the reversal of precedent and reconsideration of previous judgments may compensate. The implications of her final product culminate in an exemplary instance of conclusion.

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Excerpt / Katja Stroke-Adolphe

In deciding to reject Adkins, the Court is following what they view to be reasonable. Yet the Court also holds that “[e]ven if the wisdom of the policy be regarded as debatable…still the Legislature is entitled to its judgment,” because the legislative response to a “conviction both as to the presence of the evil and as to the means adapted to check it” cannot be found “arbitrary or capricious.” Hence, that the Legislature might find such a law reasonable, even if the judges did not, is held as evidence for overruling Adkins, following the concept of reasonableness in Holmes’ dissents. Yet this overruling occurs through the union of doctrine and constitutional reasoning. The economic crisis both forced a philosophical rejection of laissez faire and proved the fallacy of Adkins’ and Lochner’s accepting of laissez faire as fact. West Coast Hotel acknowledges the economic crisis as revealing a “compelling consideration”— the impact on the community of the imbalance of power between employer and employee. But the philosophical shift from Adkins, which viewed the minimum wage as an unfair burden on the employer, is evident when the Court states that a minimum wage is justified because “[t]he community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers.”

In his dissent, Justice Sutherland’s logic follows Adkins. Furthermore, he contests the reasonableness standard of Holmes and the West Coast Hotel majority, asserting that reasonableness refers only to an individual judge’s mind. Sutherland states: “The check upon the judge is that imposed by his oath of office, by the Constitution, and by his own conscientious and informed convictions.” This conforms to the view of the Supreme Court as representing impersonal supreme law and justice, yet the inclusion of “conscientious and informed convictions” appears contradictory. However, Sutherland rejects the claim that the “only check upon the exercise of the judicial power, when properly invoked, to declare a constitutional right superior to an unconstitutional statute is the judge’s own faculty of self-restraint” as “ill considered,” for he associates self-restraint with “will”, not “judgment”. All the checks upon judges that Sutherland mentions belong to the domain of judgment, thus the convictions he refers to must pertain to a true interpretation of the Constitution, as personal convictions belong to the domain of will. Sutherland’s comment on self-restraint is a criticism of the concept that personal motivations play an inherent role in constitutional decisions. Yet convictions, especially about ambiguous texts, cannot be impersonal. A sign of an exemplary judge may be his capacity to restrain himself from inserting biases and philosophies into judgments, as with Harlan in Plessy.

Sutherland appears to view the majority’s decision as a break with judicial integrity, stating “the meaning of the Constitution does not change with the ebb and flow of economic events.” He implies that the Court’s decision is an “amendment under the guise of interpretation,” remarking that “to miss the difference” between amendment and interpretation is “to miss all that the phrase ‘supreme law of the land’ stands for and to convert what was intended as inescapable and enduring mandates into mere moral reflections.” Moreover, in stating that the three departments of government cannot be agents of each other, he insinuates that the Court, in overruling Adkins, is acting as the agent of the Executive and Congress rather than the Constitution, likely alluding to the growing power of the Executive under Roosevelt. Yet Sutherland’s criticism of the West Coast Hotel majority is parallel to Holmes’ claims in Lochner and Adkins, for both are claiming that the majority was influenced by improper concerns—doctrine, philosophy, or views on what signifies a public good.

The Casey plurality opinion was written by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, all of whom contributed to the overruling of Booth v. Maryland by Payne v. Tennessee, an overruling influenced by the “victim’s rights” movement, with the only significant change since Booth arguably being the membership of the court. Regardless of whether Payne can be justified by the standards in Casey, the Booth line of cases centers on the ambiguous meaning of “cruel and unusual,” focusing on what is necessary for the death penalty to not be “cruel”. Yet some have argued that the death penalty is inherently “cruel and unusual.” As problematic as are the ambiguities of the Constitution, they are essential. The authors of the Constitution had their own prejudices, and the passages that deal with specifics rather than general principles, such as those dealing with slavery prior to the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, may prove most problematic to constitutional interpretation, by creating an absolute separation between concepts of morality and law. For as dangerous as the intrusion of doctrine into judgment may be, the separation may be just as harmful, and a rigid constitution would likely lead to many reprehensible judgments, for such a constitution could not adapt to the changes since its adoption. The Constitution was conceived by a certain group at a particular moment in time, but because it is interpreted in a continually shifting manner by precedent, and its meaning redefined, the Constitution becomes the product of the minds of all the justices who made judgments upon what is constitutional.

Author Commentary / Katja Stroke-Adolphe

The concept of my paper originated in reading the cases Booth v. Maryland and Payne v. Tennessee for the course “Crime and Punishment,” taught by Professor Brooks. The course focused on the connections between literature and law, and the overruling of Booth in Payne led me to consider to what extent precedent was a concrete and powerful part of law, only broken under extreme circumstances, or, instead, a narrative tool which could be shifted or dismissed based on the personal views of members of the court. This initial question led Professor Brooks to recommend looking at the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which outlines standards for evaluating reversals of precedent. Casey proved the starting point for looking at various reversals of precedent.

Most important in writing this paper was the collection and careful analysis of sources. Not all my analyses ended up in the paper, and the revision process consisted of cutting the paper’s length in half, leaving the most essential points for the paper’s argument. My research eventually focused on two lines of cases: from Lochner v. New York to West Coast Hotel v. Parrish and from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education. Reading these lines of cases led me to analyze the influence of personal elements in major reversals of precedent, and thereby see both the value and the threat that such elements may pose. The basic premise of my paper was that new cases, in their use of precedent, or breaking of precedent, redefine constitutional meanings. By tracing the manner in which constitutional meanings were redefined in major reversals of precedent, I hoped to reveal the dichotomy between constitutional elements as supreme law or judgment, as well as gaps in constitutional clarity which enable the intrusion of human moral principles, prejudices, and biases.

The paragraphs preceding this excerpt begin with my analysis of the Lochner line of cases, with Adkins, which followed the precedent of Lochner, and was overruled in West Coast Hotel. I analyze the ways that the opinions and dissents of those cases dealt with precedent cases, personal motivations, philosophies, reasonableness standards, and concepts of supreme law. I conclude that the presence of personal elements is both inherent and essential to constitutional law jurisprudence, despite how damaging the influence of bias or prejudice has often been. In these cases, the worst decisions were driven by personal motives, biases, or philosophies, but the greatest reversals also were driven by changes in what people believed to be right, or moral, and dissents often had a personal quality, too. There have been justices of the Supreme Court who fought to separate their judgments from personal stances, and that is admirable, and a subject I address in the paper outside of this excerpt. But even with the greatest justices, personal influences are to some extent unavoidable, and this is compensated for by constant reinterpretation.

Editor Commentary / Rosamond van Wingerden

In papers that incorporate many different sources and an extensive cast of characters, summarizing your argument in a concise but comprehensive conclusion can be the hardest part. Nonetheless, that’s what Katja accomplishes in this excerpt. Early on in her paper, Katja introduces her reader to multiple court cases within two legal areas to illustrate the establishment and subsequent reversal of legal precedent as the result of the personal and legal considerations of the justices who supported or dissented from each decision. Throughout the essay, she gives a detailed analysis of each example but always maintains the clarity of her paper by orienting each source and highlighting its relevance to her argument. In her conclusion, Katja skillfully draws together all her evidence to make a broader claim with implications beyond the examples of constitutional judgment she has given.

By avoiding excessive summary in her conclusion and focusing on the more general trend she has identified through her sources, Katja is able to look beyond the two cases of the influence of personal beliefs on the reversal of legal precedent that she has considered. She now presents a broader claim that connects her examples of constitutional judgment both to the framing of the Constitution and to possibilities for its future interpretation, making the overarching argument that “as dangerous as the intrusion of doctrine into judgment may be, the separation may be just as harmful, and a rigid constitution would likely lead to many reprehensible judgments, for such a constitution could not adapt to the changes since its adoption.” Katja’s argument for the benefits of allowing personal morals to intrude on legal judgment may seem counterintuitive, but by preparing her conclusion with ample evidence and expert analysis throughout the paper, she makes a compelling case.

Key Terms, Spring 2018

Key Terms

BY Writing Center

Amid a complicated tangle of lexicon terms — structure, motive, thesis and so on — key terms often get left in the dust. They are overlooked as merely the necessary means to convey information; however, key terms are much more than a linguistic convenience.

Most importantly, key terms signal the subject matter of an argument and the discipline(s) within which it is operating. They represent a microcosm of the relevant scholarly conversation, where an individual term can allude to an entire body of scholarship. When strategically placed throughout the structures of the essay, key terms keep the argument on track and help guide the reader through new points. Motive can rely on key terms in some cases: Why is a certain term important for understanding a particular concept or theory? In what ways do scholars define a term? Is there tension between the definitions of a term or in the arguments revolving around it? One can even think of key terms as algebraic variables: If they are well-defined, then they can be cleverly and clearly manipulated in the thesis like x and y in an equation.

We often conceive of our essays in terms of our theses, but this is just as possible to do so with our key terms. Indeed, paying closer attention to key terms can sometimes lead to innovative arguments or new fields of inquiry altogether. In this “anti-thetical” fashion, the following examples represent the benefits of prioritizing key terms.

Key Terms, Spring 2018

The Language of Monstrosity

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: Madelyn Broome’s “The Language of Monstrosity” argues that in film adaptations of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein, the creature’s lack of language leads to a lack of depth in audiences’ emotional responses to the creature’s misfortunes. This excerpt highlights the author’s use of her key term “human” not just as a familiar tool with which to support her argument, but as a mechanism for creating motive.

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Spring 2018

Spring 2018: Editor’s Note

BY Writing Center

Tortoise: A Journal of Writing Pedagogy is an annual journal that publishes excerpts of student scholarship from within the Princeton community. Showcasing writers from all disciplines and levels—both Princeton undergraduate and graduate students—we emphasize the writing process as much as its “finished” product.

Tortoise curates excerpts of exemplary academic writing with reflective commentaries on the research and writing methods underpinning the prose. Tortoise’s ambition is thus not only to share student writing with a wider audience but also to demonstrate how it works and how it was developed.

Our Spring 2018 issue is titled “Anti-thesis”, which may seem like a surprising theme for a publication about writing pedagogy. As writers, we tend to agonize over articulating our thesis statement. How can we possibly synthesize our entire argument into a sentence or two? Oftentimes, in the process of writing, it can be helpful to focus first on developing and strengthening other aspects of your essay like close reading analysis, orienting, and motive. In the process of developing and refining these parts of the essay, we often clarify our understanding of our own argument. Once we fully understand what we are trying to argue, the thesis will often appear, nearly fully formed and ready to be put on the page, a sum of various other argumentative parts. “Anti-thesis” encapsulates this entire process. We hope it will remind beginning and experienced writers alike that good works of academic writing build interesting and effective arguments not just by crafting a good thesis, but also by fully considering each aspect of the Writing Lexicon: motive, structure, analysis, and even conclusion.

Tortoise’s 2018 issue showcases the ways in which 13 different writers have refined and supported the core argument of their essays using far more than just a perfect thesis statement. This gallery of works covers a diverse number of disciplines and writing tactics. As you read through this issue, you will discover whether or not Asian migrants defy the “immigrant health paradox,” how spirituality and savagery collide in William Faulkner’s Light in August, and what kind of invasive species vex policymakers in the United States. You will also be introduced to how conclusions work to synthesize essay arguments, how literature reviews frame the scholarly argument that a writer is preparing to enter, and how key terms work to orient and anchor an argument in the scholarly conversation. This issue will show you how each part of the Writing Lexicon connects together, like pieces of a puzzle, to craft beautiful finished works of art. Enjoy!

Close Reading, Spring 2018

Hair as Time in The Comedy of Errors

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In this paper, Eric uses close-reading to analyze a seemingly throwaway exchange between two characters in Act II of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, revealing an unexpected equivalence between the physical feature of hair and the abstract concept of time. By using his close-reading as a lens through which to read other mentions of hair and baldness across the play, Eric gives us an example of analysis that builds on itself, taking us from hair, to time, to the play’s central claims about agency.

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