For my thesis re-writing, I chose the essay titled "A 'Most Happy Wrack': Achieving Musical Harmony in Twelfth Night".
Original: The writer of this essay places their thesis rather straightforwardly as the opening statement. It reads, "Shakespeare’s clever use and knowledge of music is one of the things that distinguishes his plays from his contemporaries." This seems to be a sort of causal claim. However, the following sentences in the paragraph seem to be much more specific, and make one guess if the original claim should perhaps be narrowed down in order to be believable.
Edited: "Shakespeare's knowledge and use of music and musical references in Twelfth Night is one thing that helps to set apart this play from many other contemporary plays." This claim, also causal, takes the exact same idea, applies it more specifically to what the essay is actually about, and becomes both more believable and more interesting.
I think you did a great job making the claim more specific! It really needed that. Still trying to get the hang of the definitions of claims, but I could see how that could be causal!
ReplyDeleteI like how you kept your thesis succinct! I also couldn't really tell how his thesis related to the paper, so nice work on giving it more direction.
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job of narrowing the topic. I agree that this thesis needed work, especially since I thought it was really difficult to find. It seems like it is the first line, as you said, but it could almost also be the last line in the middle of page 2, starting with "My goal in this paper..." I think it's too ambiguous.
ReplyDelete