Memorandum
Date: September 11, 2006
To: English 840
From: Matthew Fairman
Subject: Portfolio proposal

As a governing metaphor for the En 840 electronic portfolio, I have chosen the literary anthology. The subject about which I am most passionate is literature. A compilation of great writing, therefore, provides a fitting analogy for highlighting my passion for reading and analyzing literature. The metaphor, as I envision it, will allow me to include not only my own writing, but also the writing of my literary influences. Just as anthologies include many different genres, so will my electronic portfolio. I will relate my own entries in each genre to works by authors whom I have read in the same genre. For instance, I might allude to T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in the design of a page that includes my own entry of literary criticism, allowing Eliot’s expertise to clarify or augment meaning in my writing. I might create such a parallel to my work simply by incorporating a significant quotation in the design of the web page that includes my entry. Similar connections are possible for all of my planned entries. I hope to model my electronic journal after literarily significant journals. My creative work, whether verse or prose, will stand against the backdrop of similar work from authors who have played large roles in my development as a student, teacher, reader, and writer.

So, while my entire portfolio will be governed be the broad metaphor of the anthology, individual entries will take on a more specific controlling metaphor—that of a commonly anthologized work of literature.