Eighteenth-Century British Sailor
Your essay is due by Saturday, November 17th at 9:00pm, please send it as a word doc to roxanne.eberle@gmail.com OR upload it to Google Drive and send me a link. We will be doing peer review, however, so some material is due on Tuesday, November 6th at 10:00am prior to in-class peer review on Wednesday, November 7th.
All of the following questions require that you first generate a thesis specific to the essay at hand. Once you have stated your position, you will need to prove your argument by carefully looking at the chosen material and mustering textual evidence to support that position.
Avoid biographical readings of the texts. Your assignment here is to support literary analysis through close reading of the literature itself.
Other Guidelines:
Paper Length etc.: 5 pages, Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced
Use MLA format when writing your essay. See the Purdue Owl website for assistance if you don’t have an MLA Handbook.
Please do compile a Works Cited List for this assignment. You’ll find citation examples at the bottom of this page.
< https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01>
Writing Guidelines for English 2320
Step 1: Choose one of the following writing prompts to develop into an essay
What is it about lyric poetry that so captured the imagination of Romantic-era writers? Please do construct a focused argument in response to this prompt. For example, you might choose to discuss the the intricacies of the sonnet form and how it is used by Charlotte Smith to organize her ideas about poetic inspiration OR you could write on how different the Lyrical Ballads are in the hands of Wordsworth and Coleridge. You could also analyze the importance of the dramatic lyric or “conversation poem.” This topic requires you to write on at least 2 but no more than 3 works.
Although there is not a central female protagonist in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there are many minor characters throughout. Indeed, the novel begins with a letter addressed to Walton’s sister, Margaret Saville. What role do women characters play in the text? Feel free to draw upon the criticism in the back of our Norton edition or the John Bugg article if you feel that it will help you in crafting and developing your thesis.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein begins with Walton’s letters to his sister, which contain an account of his own actions before expanding to include his account of Frankenstein’s and the Creature’s narratives. How would you characterize these first-person accounts? Are they confessions of error, elaborate attempts at self-justification, or a combination of both? Why is the act of narrating one’s life so important to larger questions raised in the novel (i.e. questions of duty, responsibility, empathy, etc.). Feel free to draw upon the criticism in the back of our Norton edition or the John Bugg article if you feel that it will help you in crafting and developing your thesis.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be read as a novel that celebrates Romantic theories of the imagination, as articulated by Wordsworth and Coleridge It can also be read as a critique of those very same theories. In your essay, make an argument for one side or the other drawing extensively upon Shelley’s novel and one of the above writer’s statements (in both prose and poetry) on the imagination. Feel free to draw upon the criticism in the back of our Norton edition or the John Bugg article if you feel that it will help you in crafting and developing your thesis. This topic requires you to write on at least 2 but no more than 3 works.
At one point during the narration of his life’s story to Victor Frankenstein, the Creature breaks off to exclaim: “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock” (83). Does the Creature’s observation about “knowledge” hold true for all characters in the novel? Does Frankenstein privilege one form of knowledge or education over another? If so, to what end?
Literary critics have argued that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reflects her era’s anxiety about the racial “other.” If so, what position does the novel take on this heated topic? Is her portrayal of the Creature an endorsement of contemporary theories of race, a critique of them, or an analysis of the origins of racism itself? You may draw upon works read earlier in the semester when responding to this prompt.
Step 2: Essay description and outline:
Please compose a short description of the essay that you intend to write of no less than one paragraph and no more than two. Your paragraph should contain your initial thesis statement. The outline should indicate how your essay will be organized and include at least some specific examples from your chosen texts in support of your assertions but you don’t need to use a formal outline structure.
Due via electronic submission by Tuesday, November 6th at 10:00am
Step 3: Peer Review
I will be organizing peer groups for our class meeting on Wednesday, November 7th . Please see the Peer Review Document, which gives you specific directions on how to respond to the descriptions and outlines.
Peer Review Document and Peer Review Exercise
Step 4: Final Draft due Saturday, November 17th, at 9:00pm, via google doc or gmail (roxanne.eberle@gmail.com)
Examples of citation for your Works Cited page
Primary Source from our Anthology:
Wordsworth, William. “Expostulation and Reply.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume B, 2nd Edition, edited by Joseph Black, Broadview Press, 2013, p. 147.
Our edition of Frankenstein:
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Edited by J. Paul Hunter, W. W. Norton and Company, 2012.
Critical Essay from the NortonFrankenstein:
Bate, Jonathan. “[Frankenstein and the State of Nature].” Frankenstein, edited by J. Paul Hunter, W. W. Norton and Company, 2012, pp. 476-480.
John Bugg Essay
John Bugg, “‘Master of their language’: Education and Exile in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein“, 2016, https://sites.broadviewpress.com/frankenstein/articles-on-frankenstein/john-bugg-master-of-their-language-education-and-exile-in-mary-shelleys-frankenstein/.pdf. Originally published in the Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 68, No 4., December 2005.