Sharp Writing:
The Portfolio/Blog of Alexander Sharp
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What’s a Good Story Worth?
What’s a good story worth? I compare a good adaptation of Hamlet, which severe story problems, to a poor adaptation of Twelfth Night, which has an excellent story.
True Romance
Rating True Romance is an objectively bad film that just so happens to have one of the best casts ever assembled. Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, James...
Licorice Pizza
Rating Licorice Pizza might be the best bad movie ever made. The events in the film are held together by a love story, but they are all so disjointed and sporadic that it would be generous call it a plot. However, it's also written and directed by one of the great...
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Bodies Bodies Bodies is ostensibly a horror film but it provides satire that elevates it beyond a mere genre flick.
Justifying the Ways of God with Humor
I've always been a big fan of Jonathan Swift despite frequently disagreeing with him. I wrote this piece for Dr. Incorvati's English 280 class at Wittenberg. I think it was called "Survey of British English" or something like that. It's the class that convinced me to...
Justifying the Ways of God with Humor
This undergrad paper examined Jonathan Swift’s “An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity” and argues that Swift is being both disingenuous and hypocritical.
The History as Narratives and Exposition in Gould’s ”The Creation Myths of Cooperstown”
I wrote this rhetorical analysis for Dr. Strain’s Rhetorical Theory class at the University of Dayton. At the time I taught a class where I assigned a rhetorical analysis of this Stephen Jay Gould essay. It seemed only right to give myself the same assignment. While...
The History as Narratives and Exposition in Gould’s ”The Creation Myths of Cooperstown”
This rhetorical analysis of Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Creation Myths of Cooperstown” argues that Gould functions as a counter example to Hayden White’s idea that history functions as narrative.
The Absence of Art in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
This is a paper I wrote as an undergrad about Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (affiliate link). Looking back, it's a thoroughly ridiculous paper. Although accepted in the academic genre, it's impossible to follow unless you're familiar with the book. It's...
The Absence of Art in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
This is a paper I wrote as an undergrad about Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (affiliate link). Looking back, it's a thoroughly ridiculous paper. Although accepted in the academic genre, it's impossible to follow unless you're familiar with the book. It's...
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