Your first writing assignment is due by Friday, September 22nd, at 8:00 pm, via electronic submission (Google Docs, if possible). You may turn it in prior to that date but not after it.
This short writing assignment asks you to engage in close reading of ONE novel (Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Morrison’s A Mercy, or Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as well as ONE piece of secondary material (either literary theory or applied literary criticism)
Your assignment should be at least 4 pages long but no more than 5 double-spaced pages in Times 12. Please clearly identify the texts in question at the top of your assignment (and don’t forget your name).
This is not an essay assignment but rather a three-part project. Use the headings to structure each section. Although this isn’t a formal essay, please treat this as a serious writing assignment. I expect fully articulated sentences that are grammatical, proofread and spellchecked.
Please follow MLA guidelines from the MLA Handbook. If you don’t have an MLA Handbook, you should probably purchase one. The Purdue Owl website has been updated, however, and may be sufficient.
Each report should follow the following format:
1) Section on the Novel
a) Give the title of work, its author, the date(s) of composition, and the date of publication. In this section of the report, you should remark on any interesting aspects of the composition and publication process, as well as where the novel in question stands in relation to the author’s body of work. [5 points]
b) Identify when the novel is set and briefly contextualize it in its time period. There are myriad online resources to assist you with this, including BBC Interactive Timeline. [5 points]
c) Describe and identify the point-of-view from which the narrative is recounted. Please provide 1-2 examples of how the narrative establishes point of view at the beginning of the text. In other words, you’re answering some of the questions posed by Culler: “Who speaks?,” “Who speaks to whom?,” “Who speaks with what authority?” and “Who sees?” One of the questions you’ll need to explore is if the narrator is different from the focalizer over the course of the text. [15 points]
d) Examine vocabulary. How does the narrator (or narrators) employ language and what is the significance of language use and syntax choice in the novel? Culler’s question “Who speaks with what language?” will be useful here. [15 points total]
In this section you should:
List three words you looked up in a dictionary; your best source will be The Oxford English Dictionary. Write down the definition(s). Also write down any significant etymology of the word — its root word or words and their meanings. You are looking for words which you suspect are being used in a double manner, words that you think may have changed meaning over time, and/or words which seem of particular significance to the poem’s overall meaning. Note the significance of the word to narrative’s dominant themes and subject matter.
The Oxford English Dictionary. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. [Found in Reference section of the library and on Galileo]
e) Describe the overall narrative arc of the text as a whole, noting how it works in the aggregate and the ways in which one section of the text relates to another. You are looking for big changes here and you might want to begin by drawing upon the language of narrative theory and some of the variables in focalization noted by Culler, including temporality, distance, and speed. Avoid plot summary in favor of discussing narratological variables of time, distance, and speed, please refer to at least one passage in support of your assertions about the novel as a whole. [10 points]
(2) Section on the Secondary Material: You may write on either a piece of theory (i.e. Roberts) or a specific piece of literary criticiam (i.e. Novak)
(a) Summarize the overall argument of the piece in a well-developed single paragraph. You must incorporate at least one quotation from the text in your summary. [10 points]
(b) Define at least two terms or words from the text. These should be terms that are crucial to understanding the argument. They might be words or terms you are unfamiliar with or words that you sense are being used in a new or unfamiliar ways. The Oxford English Dictionary will still be helpful here but you may also need to draw on other literary sources (i.e. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms, Culler, or other handbooks for literature and theory study.) [15 points]
(c) In what ways do you find the author’s theorizing useful to your own understanding of the “Novel” as a genre? If you are reading an essay on a particular novel, you should be able to generalize about the genre more generally. [10 points]
(3) Bringing the novel and theory together
(a) Develop a possible paper topic in relation to the novel and secondary source material in question. You must state your thesis here and perhaps provide a piece of textual evidence. Think of this as a three part process: you make an observation, you analyze what you’ve found, and then you derive an argument. You will need to go beyond a thesis statement to something more like a essay description of 3 to 5 sentences. [15 points]