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Pedagogical Underpinnings

This exercise asks you to annotate part of your text for a reader.

Writing annotations asks you to direct your attention, not to your own needs and values, but to the needs of another reader--one who will come after you and need your help in understanding the text.

Medieval scribes painted or drew pictures in the margins of their texts: in part this was to make the texts beautiful, to offer a praise to their God. In fact, the British Library exhibition on the Lindisfarne Gospel describes the monks' activities in this way: "Writing and painting sacred texts were seen by the monks as acts of meditation, during which the scribe might glimpse the divine. It was a high calling but very hard work." Take a minute and look at the British Library's exhibit on the illuminated pages of the Lindisfarne Gospel. If you are willing to let it download, you can turn the pages of the Lindisfarne Gospel to page 18, where a monk has translated the Latin into Anglo-Saxon between the lines, or to page 27 and following where the translation is placed in the margins.

But in addition to their artistic "illuminations," the monks also included explanatory marginalia--explanations of sections that might cause difficulties or questions for readers. Sometimes in fact, several generations of readers will respond both to the text and to other readers in the margins of the same book. Thus, for much of the history of reading, the focus of annotation has been communal--to share information with other readers.

In this example from the Bodleian Library (Oxford), you can see one reader's comments written at the bottom of a column, commenting on the text for other readers coming after her.

And this impulse hasn't disappeared--look, for example, at a more recent form of annotation for readers, those provided by fans of graphic novels like this site. This writer clearly wishes to encourage others to enjoy a favorite text by offering clues and hints that will help readers understand the plot and history of the stories.

You have likely seen this impulse to explain, to expand, to "illuminate" a text most often in textbooks--where an editor anticipates a reader's needs with an informative note.

In this assignment you will take on the role of annotator, choosing from the text those places where a reader would likely need a little help. After researching those items, you will provide clear and detailed explanations that would help a reader better understand both that specific point and, as a result, the text as a whole.

Your job as an annotator is notto interpret the text, but to provide the information a reader would need to understand the text and to be able to interpret the text on her or his own.

Choose 10 to 15 items to annotate from the poem you have chosen to work on. If you include only definitions of words, you will annotate 15 items; if you choose items that require more research investment, you will annotate only 10.

• What to Annotate
• Reader Orientations
• Researching Annotations
• Writing, Citing and Formatting Annotations
• Grading Rubrics

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