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L

American
iterature I
EN250 & EN250-L
KEEPING AN AMERICAN LIT I COMMONPLACE BOOK
“Students with literary tastes, in days when books were hard to come by,
kept ‘commonplace’ or notebooks into which they copied out verses
or prose extracts that particularly appealed to them.”
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England,
2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965. 49.
The Commonplace Requirement
Part of your daily class preparation this semester will take the form of the commonplace book, a
popular practice among American readers up to the end of the 19th Century. Lucia Knoles has
defined commonplacing as “the act of selecting important phrases, lines, and/or passages from
texts and writing them down; the commonplace book is the notebook in which a reader has
collected quotations from works s/he has read. Commonplace books also include comments and
notes from the reader; they are frequently indexed so that the reader can classify important
themes and locate quotations related to particular topics or authors”
<www.assumption.edu/users/lknoles/commonplacebook.html>.
In earlier times commonplace entries were copied or cut and pasted into a bound notebook.
While a bound notebook makes a nice repository for later reading and browsing, it isn’t practical
for our purposes. I will collect your commonplace page(s) at the beginning of each class; they
will become the basis of much of our discussion about the works in question.
How to Prepare Your Commonplace Entries1
Follow these steps in keeping your commonplace:
• As you read—or after you finish reading—the assignment for the upcoming class session,
select three quotations and carefully and accurately copy them into your commonplace.
Add a few reflective comments (at least three sentences) about each quote. Except for the
documentation, that’s it! (More on how to select quotations and write comments follows
below.)
• Copy each day’s quotes and comments on a new page. At the top of each commonplace
page, put your name and the author, title, and original publication date of the assigned
reading. If, as will commonly be the case, you are including quotations from various
works, include the author, title, and publication date for each source.
• Add the page number from the Heath anthology at the end of each quote.
• Although I would prefer you type your daily commonplace entries, neatly handwritten
commonplace pages are also acceptable. It is preferable that you choose one approach or
the other and stick with it throughout the semester. I recommend you collect your
commonplace pages in a loose-leaf binder as they are returned to you.
1
I’d like to acknowledge Lucia Knoles of Assumption College as source for these guidelines for keeping a
commonplace. <http://www.assumption.edu/users/lknoles>
• Since you will be handing in your commonplace entries at the beginning of class, be sure
to mark the passages you quoted in your textbook, and record a few notes in the margin
to remind you of what you wrote in your comments.
Choosing Passages to Quote
• Quote lines or passages that offer a powerful statement. You may define powerful in your
own way. Sometimes a quotation is particularly persuasive, emotional, descriptive, or
meaningful—but there are all kinds of things that set one passage apart from the rest.
Decide for yourself what is powerful and explain its appeal in your comments.
• Quote lines or passages that seem absolutely central to the work at hand. Explain in your
commentary why this quote is so important to the work.
• Quote lines or passages that help you understand this text.
• Quote lines or passages that confuse you. You might find yourself wondering if you
might understand the whole text better if you could make sense of this part.
• Quote lines or passages that remind you of another author or work. In your comment,
explain how this is similar to or different from the other and what the comparison or
contrast contributes to your understanding.
• Quote a line or passage that you connect with strongly and personally. It may say
something that you want to remember and live up to in your own life. It may be
something with which you take serious issue. Or it may be about something with which
you have personal experience.
Qualities of a Good Commonplace Book?
Provocative Quotations—A really good commonplace reveals the observations of an attentive
reader who notices when there is something puzzling, or when there is a pattern, or when there is
a moment of real power in a text. Good commonplaces are also willing to confess what the
reader doesn't understand.
Interesting Comments and Connections—Good comments in commonplace books don’t just say
what is “boring” or “interesting” or “hard” or “easy.” Good comments don’t just say “I agree” or
“I disagree” with the text. Rather, they comment on the possible meanings and significance of
the quoted passage, offer explanations for your reactions, or describe the special connection you
make with the text. Good comments take into consideration the context in which the work was
originally written in order to evaluate its possible meanings and ways the text might have been
received in its own time. Good comments can also add information about the passage not
available in the anthology.
Clear Expression of Ideas—A commonplace book is serious but it is also a journal—an informal
work in progress rather than a finished “product.” Hence, it does not need to meet the writing
standards expected of formal papers. Nevertheless, your comments do need to communicate
ideas clearly and persuasively, in a fashion that earns the respect of readers.
Intellectual Development--Finally, a truly good commonplace book, although made up of
separate entries about separate texts, will reflect your gradual development and growth as student
of American literature. Entries will sometimes refer back to earlier texts in order to compare
and/or contrast works or to consider the evolution of a particular way of thinking or writing. As
specific kinds of questions or patterns begin to strike you as particularly important, your
commonplace will begin to use those as ways to explore those issues on a deeper level.

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