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By Root 10235 0

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 to see what it helps to explain.

Thesis 1: painting as bid for inclusion in the family

Evidence: the painter’s inclusion of himself with the family—the king, queen, and princess—in a fairly domestic scene

Thesis 2: painting as bid for appreciation of painter’s status and brilliance as an artist

Evidence: prominence of easel and brush and painter himself in the painting; painter’s confident stare and the apparent decentering of king and queen; painting set in artist’s studio—his space

Thesis 3: painting as bid for credit for being loyal friend and servant

Evidence: painter’s location of himself among other loyal servants at court (ladies in waiting, dog, and large dwarf)

Step 3: Locate evidence that is not adequately accounted for by each thesis.

Step 4: Make explicit the apparent mismatch between the thesis and selected evidence.

What happens when the writer begins to search for evidence that doesn’t seem to be adequately accounted for by her various thesis formulations?

Thesis 1: painting as bid for inclusion in the family

Evidence mismatches: presence of painter among servants; foregrounding of servants in image and in painting’s title (The Ladies in Waiting)— painter’s large size (larger than king and queen) does not go with the idea of “inclusion,” and emphasis on servants does not go with inclusion in royal family

Thesis 2: painting as bid for appreciation of painter’s status and brilliance as an artist

Evidence mismatches: prominence of other servants in the painting; emphasis on family as much as or more