Assignment Instructions (Fall 2021)
For this assignment, choose a literary work from our reading list that you have found engaging and about which you hold some strong and arguable position on some aspect of textual interpretation. You may wish to formulate a tentative thesis or two at this point. Better yet, you may wish to write a short, rough version of your essay at this point.
Then go online at our library and, using the MLA International Bibliography, Literary Resource Center (two databases available through the library), or other databases and indices, find articles or books that consider the work you’ve chosen and which intersect with your opinions or that present some context for your argument. Find several sources, since not all the sources that seem appropriate will be, and because I am requiring that you use at least six. While current scholarly articles on your topic are the best sources, you may also use critical biographies, literary histories, and other scholarly sources. If you don’t know whether a source is scholarly, ask.
Next, write a 2200-word essay supporting your own thesis which refers to the critical works that you’ve discovered. If you find that other people have written on the same or a closely related topic, that’s fortunate: they provide a context in which you can make your case—think of them like other people in the room, participating in the discussion. If the other writers disagree with you, you may wish to write your essay as a kind of response to one or more of them. If others agree with you, use their work to bolster your own argument—always remembering that you have to make the case from the primary text. Be sure to cite your sources and to do so in the MLA style. Because you are using MLA style citation, you must also include a Works Cited page. Other methods of citation are not acceptable.
When you submit your essay, turn in your original proposal (with my comments), your rough drafts(s), your final draft, and photocopies of pages of the articles and parts of books used from five of your sources. About those photocopies: use a highlighter to mark five quotes of at least five words each in your highlighted source materials. In the margin of the photocopies, write exactly where—page and paragraph!—the quote occurs in your essay.
Place your essay, with the final draft on top, in the left pocket. Place your carefully highlighted and keyed photocopies in the right pocket. I will subtract points from your final grade for anything you fail to include.
In addition, submit your final draft electronically. Entitle both the email AND the file like this: YourLastName, LITR 356, Fall 2021, Final Essay.
So if your last name is Smith, both the email and the file will say Smith, LITR 356, Fall 2021
Example Sources
Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson by
Secular Lyric interrogates the distinctively individual ways that Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson transformed classical, romantic, and early modern forms of lyric expression to address the developing conditions of Western modernity, especially the heterogeneity of believers and beliefs in an increasingly secular society. Analyzing historically and formally how these poets inscribed the pressures of the modern crowd in the text of their poems, John Michael shows how the masses appear in these poets' work as potential readers to be courted and resisted, often at the same time. Unlike their more conventional contemporaries, Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson resist advising, sermonizing or consoling their audiences. They resist most familiar senses of meaning as well. For them, the processes of signification in print rather than the communication of truths become central to poetry, which in turn becomes a characteristic of modern verse in the Western world. Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson, in idiosyncratic but related ways, each disrupt conventional expectations while foregrounding language's material density, thereby revealing both the potential and the limitations of art in the modern age.
Call Number: Ebook
Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature & Society by
Bringing together a variety of scholarly voices, this book argues for the necessity of understanding the important role literature plays in crystallizing the ideologies of the oppressed, while exploring the necessarily racialized character of utopian thought in American culture and society. Utopia in everyday usage designates an idealized fantasy place, but within the interdisciplinary field of utopian studies, the term often describes the worldviews of non-dominant groups when they challenge the ruling order. In a time when white supremacy is reasserting itself in the US and around the world, there is a growing need to understand the vital relationship between race and utopia as a resource for resistance. Utopian literature opens up that relationship by envisioning and negotiating the prospect of a better future while acknowledging the brutal past. The collection fills a critical gap in both literary studies, which has largely ignored the issue of race and utopia, and utopian studies, which has said too little about race.
Call Number: Request Chapter from ILL: Frederick Douglass's utopia: searching for the space of Black freedom / David Lemke
- Romantic flight in Jewett's "White Heron" Church discusses Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron." Jewett tells the story of Sylvia, a young girl who spends her first years in an oppressive manufacturing town, then, at eight, to her great joy, goes to live with her grandmother on a farm in coastal New England.
Tip from Your Professor: Sources
All secondary sources are not created equal. Usually the more recent the article or book and the more respected the author or journal, the better.
Most magazines and internet sources are not very well respected sources for scholarly essays. There are, of course, more exceptions all the time. Some very good work is being put on the internet by universities and professional organizations. Some very bad work is also being posted, particularly on YouTube.
Helpful Subject Headings for Books on Your Topic
You can use subjects to find relevant secondary sources for your essay. Subjects are like tags that authors, publishers, and librarians add to source records so that you can easily find all of the sources on that topic.