Irish 226: Final Paper Assignment
Length: Approximately 10 double-spaced typed pages
Due Wednesday, April 30, 2008 via email by 11:59 pm
You may
choose to do this paper on any works of your choosing, so long as they
are by Irish authors. This paper should
present your own in-depth interpretation of a particular thematic or
technical aspect of the work(s) you choose. You
may focus on one particular feature of one work or
you may present your own in-depth study of a theme or technique as it
is used in two or more of the works we've read.
For example, you might analyze the role a particular image or
symbol plays in the work(s) you've picked. You
might choose to examine the intersection of history, politics, and
literature in one or more of the works we've read.
Whatever you decide to do,
remember that this essay is argumentative.
That is to say, you'll need to convince the reader that the
topic you're presenting is significant and that it works the way you
say it does. How convincing you are
depends on how well you use the material at your disposal.
That material should be drawn primarily from the work you've
chosen, but you must also consult at least three secondary research
sources; no more than half of your research sources should be
from online sources, and if you use internet research, it is your
responsibility to make sure the sources are reputable, academic sources (see below) .
You must be careful, however, to use your research to
support your own point; avoid simply reporting what other
researchers have said.
This paper should be mainly an
interpretive paper; it is not a review or summary of criticism
on a work. Use material from any secondary
resources you select to support your interpretation or to raise
additional critical issues. I urge you to
write a rough draft or outline of your argument before
you begin to read any criticism.
Prewriting: Before you
write a first draft, you should reread the work carefully, with an eye
towards investigating, supporting, and thinking through your topic. You may well find points that relate to your
topic that you haven't discovered before. Take
notes as you reread, carefully noting page numbers for references you
wish to come back to. If you extract a
quotation to use in your essay, write it down carefully,
word-for-word and punctuation mark-by-punctuation mark.
If you find you are collecting too many examples as support for
your thesis, select the strongest examples only for use in your essay.
Evaluation: I will judge your performance by how well you
do what your thesis states as a goal for your paper.
Writing style and organization count as well as content, so be
sure to begin with a thorough outline and to leave yourself time to
revise your draft(s) and to proofread
your final draft carefully. I have found
that many students have trouble incorporating source material into
their own writing and that this often results in the confusion of the
student's own good ideas in a jumble of unattributed, unexplained
quotations. PLEASE come
and check with me if you are unsure of how to handle your reference
sources as you work them into your paper.
You should follow your direct
quotations with the appropriate page number from the text in
parentheses. The final page of your paper
should be a "Works Cited" page in proper MLA format. Remember, quotations longer than four lines
should be presented in single-spaced blocks indented in the text.
Research
Sources: RESEARCH SHOULD NOT BE THE
PRIMARY FOCUS OF THIS PAPER! Instead, your research should supplement and deepen your own analysis of the text(s). Bertrand
Library has a strong collection of books and periodicals that deal with
Irish literature. You may also wish to
make use of "Article Finder" and other useful electronic databases
available from the ISR homepage (http://www.bucknell.edu/isr/). Remember, you do not need to do extensive
research for this essay; three supplementary sources will be sufficient
as a minimum.