You may write about any text we have read this semester as long as you have not already written on it. If you would like, you may choose to focus on two or three texts, but should you do so, you will need to have a very precisely defined topic. As you develop your topic, consider the themes we have been addressing this semester: theatricality, honor, martial valor, autonomy, libertinism, sexual incapacity, homoeroticism, homosociality, (love) slavery, sensibility, authorship, and reproduction. Think of these themes as interpretive problems: Is theatricality a means to power or a feminizing exercise? Why is sexual incapacity at the center of texts celebrating libertinism? How does martial valor function in a culture of sensibility? Identify an interpretive problem within the text(s) that you would like to examine.
Once you have identifed an interpretive problem, gather rescources that speak to it. You will incorporate at least four sources into your essay, both contextual (at least 1) and critical (at least two). Of course, your research will lead you to many sources, and your task is to select the sources most significant to the problem that you are investigating.