2120H: British Literature

Essay Assignment # 2

Rough draft due Monday, November 26 (must be typed, double-spaced, and at least 3 pages long). In-class workshop. Although I won’t be collecting a “mountain of notes” or an outline before the draft is due, I encourage you to use these steps as you work on your paper—particularly the notes, as this will help you generate creative and textually specific ideas. I’ll be happy to look at these at any point, if you like.

Final Drafts due Monday, Dec. 3 (last day of class). Turn in both drafts, a works cited page (MLA style), and peer evaluations. Your title should be meaningful and specific; strive for originality. Use a standard 12 pt. font (Times New Roman or Palatino, for instance) and standard margins; there should be no fewer than 250 words per page (use the word count function to check this if you’re unsure). Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and fastened with a paper clip or staple. Make sure your pages are numbered. Your paper must be at least five full pages; longer is fine. Proofread carefully.

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Your second essay will be a short (5 page) analytical essay. It is not a research paper, although you are welcome to introduce outside sources if you like (academic sources only; no Wikipedia) and make sure you document and credit them properly. Remember that plagiarism results in failure. You may choose as your focus any of the works we read by Pope, Swift, Wordsworth, Brontë, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Eliot, or Rhys, whether or not we discussed them in class. 

Develop a thesis-driven essay in response to one of the following topic suggestions or a topic of your own devising. If you choose the latter option, I expect you to develop your topic in accordance with the kinds of ideas, themes, and issues that have dominated this survey and to submit a written explanation of your topic to me for approval.

Possible Topics:

1. Place two texts from different periods in dialogue with each other, demonstrating how the later work appropriates, revises, or resists specific central ideas in the earlier work. This will require you to carefully identify the ideas you are placing in conversation with each other and to work carefully with the language of both texts in order to show the relationship between them.
2. Choose a historically relevant cultural artifact or event (like Shayna’s Irish Nationalist song, for instance, or the Easter uprising itself) and use it as a springboard for an analysis of a particular text. You’ll want to establish a relationship between the two, arguing that the cultural/historical background you’re providing offers a particular way of understanding the text. Your emphasis, I want to stress, will be on the literary text; your research will provide a context and a direction for your analysis. Remember that ultimately you are looking to uncover the ideas embedded in the text.
3. Choose one text (or two shorter, related works) and construct an argument about the extent to which it challenges existing hierarchies of gender or class or race. You’ll want to make sure you anchor your argument with carefully selected textual evidence and close analysis. Make sure your argument is sufficiently complex: it’s not enough, for instance, to say that Olaudah Equiano challenges a racial hierarchy: of course it does! In order to formulate an effective argument, you’d need to consider on what grounds Equiano constructs this challenge, or through what kinds of images he builds his case—something that complicates the question, something that’s interpretive, rather than overtly stated in the text itself.
4. Construct an argument about the way a specific text treats language itself. What does it have to say about the power of language, the limitations of language, the importance of language? How is this representation of language connected to the major ideas at stake in the work—ideas about culture, society, history, knowledge? (You might also choose two texts that you could place in relation to each other, if you can think of a meaningful and even provocative way to connect them.)

Clearly, these topics are broad and suggestive rather than prescriptive: as Honors and Academy students, I want to offer you plenty of freedom to explore your interests and ideas. These topics are designed to provide helpful frameworks, not specific questions of approaches. If you’d like additional guidance as you develop your topic, though, I’d be very happy to talk to you.

Remember to refer to the Essay Writing Guidelines I distributed and discussed earlier in the semester. These should offer plenty of practical advice. (They’re also posted online.)

And of course, you are welcome to come to see me in my office hours at any stage of the process.