Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [158]
recognizable thesis doesn’t emerge until near the end (in paragraph 8).
The paper contains more than one potential thesis. The paper ignores the conflicts among its various theses and some of its evidence.
The writer tends to end paragraphs with promising observations and then walk away, leaving the observations undeveloped. Rather than draw out the implications of her observations, she halts her thinking too soon in order to move on to the next piece of evidence. See, for example, this writer’s repeated return to paragraph openings using “next” and “also,” which traps her into listing parallel examples rather than building connections among them. As we will illustrate later, the writer can remedy this problem by querying her observations with the question “So what?”
What is especially good about the draft is that it reveals the writer’s willingness to push on from her first idea (reading the painting as an endorsement of the divine right of kings, expressed by the light shining on the princess) by seeking out complicating evidence. This first idea does not account for enough of the evidence and is undermined by evidence that clearly doesn’t fit, such as the small size and decentering of the king and queen, and the large size and foregrounding of the painter himself.
Rather than ignoring these potentially troublesome details, the writer instead zooms in on them, making the painter’s representation of himself and of his employers the 1 for doing 10 on 1 (making a number of observations about a single representative piece of evidence and analyzing it in depth).
Starting a Revision by Looking Again at the Details: The Method
Now what? The writer is ready to rewrite the paper in order to choose and better define her thesis. She might first wish to step back a bit from her initial formulations by using The Method to again survey the details of the painting, looking for patterns of repetition and contrast.
Examples of exact or nearly exact repetitions:
the pictures in the background
the fact that both the dwarf and the painter, each on his own side of the
painting, stare confidently and directly at the viewer
Examples of strands (repetition of the same or similar kind of detail):
details having to do with family
servants: dwarf, meninas, dog? painter?
details having to do with art and the making of art: easel, brush, paintings on wall
Examples of organizing contrasts—binaries:
royalty/commoners
employers/servants
large/small
foreground/background
central (prominent)/marginalized (less prominent)
Having used The Method to see the evidence anew, the writer would be ready to try the Six Steps for Making the Thesis Evolve. She’d begin by noticing that, as is the case in most exploratory drafts, she has several potential thesis statements vying for control of the paper.
Applying the Six Steps to Las Meninas
Step 1: Formulate a working thesis.
As a general rule, you should assume the presence of multiple, often competing theses, some of which you may not have yet detected. In the Las Meninas paper, as is often the case in early drafts, no single idea emerges clearly as the thesis. Instead, we get three related but not entirely compatible ideas vying for control of the paper (all in paragraph 8):
“I think that Velázquez wants the king to…”
Thesis 1: give Velázquez “the recognition he deserves by including him in the ‘family’.”
Thesis 2: “show that his [Velázquez’s] status and brilliance [as an artist] have been appreciated.”
Thesis 3: give Velázquez “the credit he deserved for being a loyal friend and servant.”
These three ideas about the painter’s intentions could be made to work together, but at present the writer is left with an uneasy fit among them.
Step 2: See how far you can make each thesis go in accounting for evidence.
Each of the three potential thesis ideas explains some of the evidence. The writer should try on each one