English 4620/5620*

Essay Assignment

Dr. M. Diane Krantz

Assignment: You are to write a paper on one of the topics given below. I will expect the paper to include critical sources (at least five/ten*, NOT including your text), to show the analytic ability of an upper division major, and to be relatively free of problems of form (poor organization, immature prose, incorrect spelling, punctuation, etc). Consult the grading sheet I distribute to ascertain the base level of writing that will be expected for a given grade. Feel free to consult with me especially about the analysis to see if you are on the right track. The paper should take at least three weeks of significant work to be in its polished form. All texts analyzed must have been assigned for this class. Failure to use five/ten* or more critical sources will result in a lower paper grade. Your text, the Bible, other religious works, Encyclopedias, or Wickepedia are NOT to be counted as critical sources. Online sources must be scholarly and peer-reviewed. Treat Library Databases as you would physical library resources.

Supplemental information for obtaining a decent grade:

Due Dates: Friday, October 30. Draft to be discussed at mandatory draft workshop. This should be the full length, typed, and show considerable development.
Friday, November 6. Final Draft accompanied by first draft and draft workshop sheet.

1. Using explication for small parts of a work, interpret a particular aspect of one of the long poems or romances we have read (theme, imagery, character, structure, etc.) in terms of the overall meaning you claim for the work. Like the other prompts, this one requires using at least five/ten critical sources to support your thesis for the complete work. The paper may contain endnotes and must contain a bibliography.

2. Consider the role of the hero in a Sixteenth-Century work and a Seventeenth-Century work. Do these heroes have anything in common with each other? Do they have anything in common with our ideas about what makes a hero today? (Do not devote more than a couple of pages to the hero today. This paper emphasizes heroes studied in this class.) How do they reflect what is most valued in the culture?

3. Early Modern texts often reflected conflicts within their authors about ideas or values promoted by political or religious authorities. Analyze one or compare and contrast two texts with respect to a vexed notion such as the paradox inherent in teachings on predestination and free will or the imposing of a colonial government on self-determining indigenous peoples. Be sure the analysis is of the texts and that your position is supported by literary criticism and not biblical or other reference exegesis.

4. Analyze an Early Modern text with respect to how it reflects or refutes a particular historical, scientific, commercial, or religious idea that we have studied. A romance might reflect renaissance ideas about the role of women. An epic might show what was expected of the ruling estate in in the Early Modern Period.

5. This one needs pre-approval. If you read a critic who asks a question about the Early Modern text that you would like to answer with an analysis, you may use that idea for your paper with prior approval.

Format: Please do not include a title page. All papers must be typed and follow MLA format unless otherwise agreed on. Pages should be double-spaced with no extra empty lines and numbered. The upper right hand corner of the first page should have your name, my name, the date, and the course number. Standard margins are 1" top, bottom, and sides. Please do not right justify. Left justify only. Also, please give the paper a title and consult an MLA handbook for the bibliographic form for your outside sources.

NB: You may include dictionary entries, encyclopedias, the Bible, and biography in the bibliography, but note that these are not critical sources and that five/ten* outside sources used for the paper must have been written as literary criticism or criticism in closely related fields supplementing the mostly lit crit. in the biblio.