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English 3564


Syllabus

Schedule

Assignments

Assignment Two
Literary Analysis

Due Dates: Requirements:
Topic-Selection Process Post—21 March 2025
Working Draft—15 April 2025
Final Draft—24 April 2025
Reflection Process Post—also 24 April 2025
  • 5-7 typed pages
  • MLA Format

Objective

To construct a persuasive argument for a particular interpretation of a work of literature.

Overview

In the first assignment, you considered very brief passages and examined them in minute detail. It is now time to apply those same skills to an overall literary work from this semester. Attention to detail will still be important, but now it will also be important to select the most useful evidence from this longer text.

In writing this paper, please avoid simply summarizing the work. You can presume that your audience has already read the text, so you should devote your energies to analyzing it. In other words, break the text down for your reader and only refer to those parts of it that contribute to your interpretation. Along these lines, do not let the structure of the chosen work determine the structure of your own argument. Structure the argument according to your thesis statement and the subtopics that will enable you to prove this thesis. Do not hesitate to take quotations from the work out of order.

Topics

Identify a literary work on the syllabus for this semester's class. With this work in mind, choose from among the following topics or choose one of your own (after discussing it with me):

Gender—Which implicit or explicit definitions of gender guide the author in telling their story? How does a sense of having a defined gender-identity shape a character's decisions in the text? To which extent does this text reinforce or challenge the conventions governing gender in their time and/or in our own?

The Individual and the Community—It is conventional to associate rebellion against the larger community with youthfulness and innovation. Or, alternatively, one may condemn the rebels in one's community as unhealthy sociopaths. Such judgments likely hinge on perceived merits of a community and its interests. Choose a work that addresses concerns about the often-strained relationship between individuals and their communities and examine conflicts pitting individual against collective rights and obligations.

Overcoming the History of Slavery—We have covered a time period in the aftermath of slavery and the war that brought that systemic injustice to an end. Choose a work that tries to offer guidance to America as it seeks to redress the numerous wrongs that follow from slavery and persist into the post-Civil-War era. Are this work's suggestions still useful? How does a changing historical context change the applicability of these suggestions?

Realism—Can we claim that one work of literature is more realistic than another? Consider the factors that shape our understandings of realism. Choose a work that tests the limits of literary realism in one way or another. What are the advantages of "keeping it real", and what are the advantages of warping reality into new seemingly unreal shapes?

Tradition—The modernists celebrated and mourned a rupture with tradition resulting from the trauma of global wars and rapid industrialization. Choose a modernist work and explain how it either revels in the freedom of a new age, bemoans the resulting confusion, or manages to do both of these things at the same time. How does the writer's stance on this question influence the structure of the work in question?

Technologies of Change—The past 150 years have witnessed rapid shifts in technologies of production, communication, warfare, and entertainment. How does your chosen text represent and/or account for the toll of technological change in the lives of its characters and/or readers?

Choose a Topic of Your Own—But consult with me about it in advance.

Procedure

  1. Choose a topic from above and one work from the syllabus that genuinely interests you and that will allow you to elaborate the most effectively on the chosen topic. Complete a topic-selection process post online by the end of the day on Monday, 24 March 2025.

  2. Read through the work again (if it is short enough) or at least skim it and take notes on the salient points as well as similarities and differences between it and related works.

  3. Develop a thesis statement that makes an argument pertaining to that topic.

  4. Break the argument down into between two and four subtopics that are likewise arguable (three, of course, is the standard number of subtopics). Think about the most logical arrangement of subtopics for the structure of your argument.

  5. Write a draft of your argument. Go back and reconsider your thesis statement. Revise it.

  6. Be ready to share a copy of this draft (using GoogleDocs) with a classmate on April 15th, 2025, for peer-editing. If you cannot attend class on that day, let me know. You can regain some of the points lost to an absence on peer-editing day if you can exchange drafts with another classmate and edit it before turning in the final draft. Make a new copy of the edited draft as you begin the next stage of revisions.

  7. Be sure to include a Works Cited List on the last page of the paper.

  8. Be sure the paper is at least five pages long. Five pages is the absolute minimum length, and papers under five pages will lose some points. That is, please write five full pages of text (not five pieces of paper with some writing on them).

  9. Revise and proofread the paper in the following week and submit the final draft through Canvas by midnight on April 24th, 2025.

  10. Complete a Reflection Process Post in class on April 24th, 2025.

Writing Tips

I have based many of these tips on my comments on previous papers. They address problems that often come up for students when writing papers.

  1. In most cases, your first thesis statement will not be arguable enough. Keep revising it until you have a statement that truly arguable and truly interesting. Do not hesitate to revise it after you have written a complete draft of the paper. The thesis statement should directly address your two chosen works.

    Examples:

    FIRST TRY: American society is regulated by two separate justice systems.

    SECOND TRY—NOT THERE YET: Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson includes two separate justice systems.

    A GOOD THESIS: In his analysis of slavery in Pudd'nhead Wilson, Mark Twain identifies two separate systems of justice whose conflicts work against efforts to end institutional racism.

    Notice the evolution from an overly general, though accurate, statement about the two works to a statement about the difference between the two works to a precise explanation of how these books compare.

  2. Organize your paper around the thesis statement and be sure each part of your argument bears some clear relationship to the thesis statement. Do not leave it to your reader to figure out what each subtopic is doing in your paper. Consider the following outline for an argument supporting the above thesis:

    THESIS: In his analysis of slavery in Pudd'nhead Wilson, Mark Twain identifies two irreconcilable justice systems that complicate efforts to end institutional racism in the post-Civil-War South.

    1. Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel-length critique of slavery and its aftermath.

    2. The seemingly unrelated conflict in the argument between Tom Driscoll and Luigi reveals the presence of two separate, irreconcilable justice systems in Wilson's community.

    3. The conflict between competing notions of justice explains the persistence of racism in the post-Civil-War American South.

    Turn each of these subtopics into a unified paragraph with supporting evidence in the form of quotations. If a paragraph gets too long, break it down into two paragraphs, but make careful use of transitional phrases to keep the logic clear to the reader.

  3. Follow MLA format when using quotations or paraphrases to support the argument:

    1. Use blended quotations for quotations under four lines and block quotations for quotations over four lines. Remember the punctuation rules for each type of quotation. If you have questions about this, ask me or look it up in a style guide such as the ones I have provided on the course Canvas page.

    2. Write a list of Works Cited at the end of the paper. The last name of the author comes first, then the title of the selection. Then, if applicable, the title of the book in which you found the work (i. e.: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., vol. E). Notice that you should italicize the name of a book whenever you mention it in your paper. Titles of poems and short stories go in quotes instead of italics.

      Examples:

      Bishop, Elizabeth. "The Armadillo." 1965. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine, et. al., 10th ed., vol. E, 2022, pp. 54-55.

      Alphabetize works cited according to the author's last name. The year of original publication after the work's title in the above two examples is optional, but the year of publication after the publisher is required. There are many other rules for MLA format for peculiar instances that will come up, but the above two examples should serve as useful models for the vast majority of cases for this class. Do not hesitate to look these rules up in a style manual.

  4. Grammar issues:

    1. Remember the following items from the Assignment One guidelines:

      1. Avoid the passive voice.

      2. Avoid contractions

      3. If it is a book, italicize its title. If it is a poem, put the title in quotes.

      4. Distinguish correctly between its and it's.

      5. Use the present tense for events in a literary text.

    2. Referring to words as words. When referring a word, and not to the thing it represents, put that word in italics. (See example in 4.a.1. above.)

    3. Transitions. These are words that serve as signposts pointing out the direction of your argument to your readers. Some of these transitions are like "One Way" signs leading your reader on to the next point. Others are like "U Turn" signs indicating a reversal of direction. There are other more subtle transitions that alter the tone or indicate approval or disapproval of what you are discussing.

      Examples:

      One Way Signs (leading from before to after or from cause to effect)

      Janie's marriage to Joe Starks ends when he dies. Subsequently, Janie meets Tea Cake and begins a relationship with him that her neighbors find scandalous.

      World War I caused many young artists to question the very basis for their systems of belief. Consequently, their art depicts a world of disorderly and, at times, indecipherable fragments.

      W. E. B. DuBois was an early supporter of Booker T. Washington. Thus, his public disenchantment with Washington's educational programs surprised his readers at the time.

      U-turn Signs (establishing a contrast between ideas)

      Whereas Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning" is extremely complex and allusive, Langston Hughes's poems are straightforward and accessible to a wide range of readers.s

      Kate Chopin sets Alcée Arobin up as the traditional "rake," who will ruin Edna Pontellier's life. However, Arobin's presence in Edna's house never produces the anticipated scandal.

      These are just a few examples of the numerous transitions out there that can help you arrange your ideas. Most style manuals will give you a more exhaustive list of options and fuller explanations of how to use them. Your best resource, however, is your own experience with written and spoken language. You undoubtedly hear and use dozens of these transitions per day. Integrate the appropriate ones into your writing.

      Keep in mind also that these transitions are often the most important as you move from one subtopic in your paper to the next. Very frequently, the first sentence in a new paragraph needs to provide the reader a clear transition between ideas in the previous paragraph and ideas in the new one.


John D. Schwetman
17 March 2025