Essay Guidelines:
You must discuss at least 2 pieces of literature but no more than 3
Paper Length etc.: 5 pages, Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced
Step 1: Choose one of the following writing prompts to develop into an essay
In an essay that makes connections between the Romantic and Victorian periods, discuss experiments in lyric poetry. What is it about lyric poetry that so captured the imagination of writers working in these eras and how does it evolve over the course of the nineteenth century? Please do construct a focused argument in response to this prompt. For example, you might choose to discuss the interrelationship of the Romantic dramatic lyric to the Victorian dramatic monologue. For this paper, you’ll need to write on different poems than you did for your first essay (i.e. if you wrote on a Smith sonnet for example, you would not be able to write on that particular sonnet again), however, you may select a Romantic-era poem that you have not yet written about.
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?
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.).
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be read as a novel that celebrates Romantic theories of the imagination, as articulated by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley. 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.
In “The Great Towns,” a chapter from Engels’s book length study of The Condition of the Working Class in England, the author writes: “Men regard their fellows not as human beings, but as pawns in the struggle for existence. Everyone exploits his neighbor with the result that the stronger tramples the weaker under foot. The strongest of all, a tiny group of capitalists, monopolize everything, while the weakest, who are the vast majority, succumb to the most abject poverty” (????). Engels suggests that class warfare is inevitable and some of the other writers we have read this semester might agree with him. Others, however, would not. In your essay discuss the alternatives to class warfare posed by other writers (i.e. Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens etc. when faced with the complexities of England’s transition from an agrarian to an industrial society).
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. You can think of this as a draft of your introductory paragraph(s). 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.
Due via electronic submission by Thursday, April 5th at 5:00pm
Step 3: Peer Review
I will be organizing peer groups for our class meeting on Friday, April 6th. 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 Friday, April 13th, via google doc or gmail (roxanne.eberle@gmail.com) by 10:00pm
Further Directions:
All of the essay prompts 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.
If you use any outside criticism for this assignment, please cite it according to the MLA guidelines.
Writing Guidelines for English 2320 (updated 27 Feb)
Essay Writing Powerpoint (updated 2/27)