literary analysis / research paper
Order Description
Goal

Write a research-based literary analysis that incorporates scholars’ perspectives about the work in addition to your own.

Considerations

This essay will be a literary analysis even though it is considered to be a research paper. As a reminder, a literary analysis must be interpretive in nature. It must not offer review of the text, providing personal likes and dislikes about the work, nor should it be a ‘book-report-style’ summary essay that offers little in the way of interpretation or argument.

The essay should illuminate a new way of considering the text that other readers might not have picked up on. The paper’s body will defend or support your thesis about the work by identifying quotations in each body paragraph that reinforce your argument and providing outside sources as appropriate.

Topic options below:

You must choose one of the following topics on which to focus your argument:

OPTION ONE: Connecting Literature with Popular Culture ?

Focus: a play in the anthology that can be meaningfully compared to a contemporary film or TV show.?

Research Requirement:

? A primary work (the play from the anthology)

? A film or an episode of a TV show

? Two articles about the literary work or the contemporary film or short story.

OPTION TWO: Applying Literary Criticism ?

Focus: any work in the anthology (except those by William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, or Robert Frost) / The textbook offers an entry into a variety of critical approaches (2330-54), and students should delve deeper into the form of criticism they choose by researching online and reading more prior to writing their essay.

Research Requirement:

? The primary work from the anthology

? Three articles about the critical approach, the work, or the author

RESEARCH PAPER REQUIREMENTS

Length: 1,200 words (minimum)—this includes quotations, but not the works cited page ?

Format: ?MLA format is required—page setup, quotation incorporation, and a works cited page