By: Ozkul Ege Akin
For the historical annotation project, a part of the course of English 1102, I chose to annotate the letters which Alexander Hamilton sent to his wife, Elizabeth Hamilton, which were published by the American “National Archives” webpage. The main aspect that drew me to this document was emotion. I have graduated from the Istanbul University Conservatory of Music in piano and continued to perform and sing throughout my life. One could say that I’m an expert in feeling and conveying emotions through my art. Thus, I thought it would be very interesting and exciting to historically annotate letters between two lovers who are separated by war, and analyze historical events through these sorrowful documents. Moreover, in my choice of document I was also inspired by Alexander Hamilton. I’ve got to know this man and his deeds in class and got to respect him, therefore I wanted to study and actually scrutinize his own self through his writings instead of a musical reflection of his character.
That being said, there will be additional toughness to annotating these letters because they do not necessarily include historical events in them. My plan is to research all the important historical aspects of the period in which these letters were sent, which is 1781, and refer to these historical aspects and/or their outcomes as I am annotating the letters. Additionally, I will research the social aspects of the environment Elizabeth and Alexander Hamilton are in during that time and their effects on the writers. After that, I will cross-refer to them as I’m annotating the tone and other emotional aspects of the letters.
The challenges I’ve encountered so far is analyzing the language in the letters, due to the difference in period between the two languages of the year the letters were written and our time. My plan is to find other letters or historical documents belonging to that time period and figure out how to best analyze the literary components without the old language getting in my way.
Overall, I think the choice I made for the historical annotation project is perfectly suitable for me as I have previously mentioned. It might be more difficult than a usual annotation project but in my opinion it will make me grasp much more about Alexander Hamilton, not only historically, but also emotionally.