Writing Tips for Hum 1
Writing an introduction
|Other writing tips:|
|The introduction to a paper is a very important section, in that it
sets the expectations of the reader. While there is no one formula for
a good introduction, in general, an introduction to a formal paper of this
type should accomplish the following:
Although a successful introduction will follow these general guidelines, none of them should imply a rigid formula, nor will I expect one. With that said, here are two examples of successful short introductions:
|The explosion of fist fights, police, jeers,
and cheers that greeted the notorious 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's
The Rite of Spring is now famous as the screaming birth of musical
Stuckenschmidt says that the dissonance percussiveness, and savagery of the score were unlike anything the public had heard to that time (67)
, and this premiere became a symbol of the uncompromising new musical language that refused to pander to prettiness or sentimentality. However, contrary to Stuckenschmidt's and other conventional interpretations, The Rite of Spring was a last gasp of Romanticism rather than the birth of modernism,
as shown in its unreserved drama and spectacle, its heritage of Russian nationalism, and its idealization of "primitive" man.
Here the author grabs the reader's attention.
Though citations are not typically used in an introduction, the author here uses it to establish a controversy and hence the significance of the thesis.
Here the author states the thesis in an unambiguous way.
Here the author gives a preview of the three points he will make to support his thesis.
|In 1901, Pablo Picasso's closest friend, Carlos Casagemas, committed suicide, an event which shocked the young artist and drove him into a deep, guilt-laden depression. Indeed, in the aftermath of this tragedy, Picasso became superstitious in his fear of anything associated with death, an obsession which was reflected not just in his subsequent "blue period" paintings, but throughout his life. The painting Picasso executed in response to Casagemas' death, paradoxically titled La Vie [Life] (1903), develops several of the distinctive motives that would become important to his later paintings, including his ambivalent view of women, a close connection between sex and death, and an intensely subjective viewpoint.||