English
286: Final Paper Assignment
Length: Ten double-spaced typed pages (not counting "Works Cited")
Due: Monday, December 3, 2007
You
may choose to do this paper on any works of your choosing, so long as
they are on our syllabus; you should not write about topics you have
chosen already for your first two papers. 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 the internet, and if you use internet research, it is your
responsibility to make sure the sources are reputable.
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! Bertrand
Library has a strong collection of books and periodicals that deal with
literary criticism. 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.