Choose one of the following texts to analyze and interpret. As you do so, explain how your chosen text embodies and showcases the preoccupations, themes, values, and techniques of Modernism.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (T. S. Eliot)
“Babylon Revisited” (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“Sunday Morning” (Wallace Stevens)
“[the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls]” (E. E. Cummings)
“Design” (Robert Frost)
“The Garden” (Ezra Pound)
“Sea Poppies” (H.D. [Hilda Doolittle])
NOTE WELL: It is very important that you answer the assigned question. Don’t write a little “report” on your author. Don’t summarize the text. Just answer the question: how does your chosen poem embody and showcase the preoccupations, themes, values, and techniques of Modernism. (Your essay is about Modernism itself as much as it is about your poem.) Your thesis statement should answer it directly, and then the body of your essay should develop that thesis in detail. Do not include extraneous material (for example, an introductory paragraph outlining the author’s biography if that biography isn’t directly relevant to your thesis). No filler!
Be sure to quote frequently from your chosen text. About 15-20% of your overall word-count should consist of quotations. Use at least three quotations per body paragraph and analyze them closely.
Be sure to cite and document your quotations correctly according to MLA style. This is a high priority.
In-text citation format:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html
Works Cited page format:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_basic_format.html
Quotations format:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_quotations.html
Do not incorporate material from non-scholarly sources or study guides such as Schmoop, Cliff Notes, Spark Notes, websites, and so forth. This is inappropriate for college-level scholarship. You can include source material only if it is truly scholarly (such as an academic journal article discovered via a library database), and only if you cite and document the source correctly.
Avoid unnecessary summarizing of your text. Assume that your reader already knows the superficial content of the poem/story very well: the basic plot, the characters, and so forth, but she has no idea how to interpret it. So don’t bore your reader by rehashing what she already knows. Help her grasp the ideas that underlie those basic elements.
Grading criteria:
Substantive points of argument for thesis and topic sentences
Close/detailed/precise analysis of texts
Theoretical sophistication, depth of thought
Literary-historical context in the introduction paragraph and, when appropriate, throughout.
Overall quality of your writing: organization, style, grammar/mechanics
Required: At least 1000-1250 words (Shorter essays will not pass.)
Special Note:
Plagiarized essays–even a single sentence!–will receive a zero and may not be rewritten. Every single word, clause, sentence, and idea of your essay must be your own unless you have clearly given attribution to your sources in one or both of these ways:
a. You have put borrowed words in quotation marks and have concluded the quotation with a parenthetical citation in MLA format. A Works Cited section must appear at the end of your essay, in MLA format, giving full documentation for the original source. Example: Richard Ellman explains, “Historians of literature like to regard a century as a series of ten faces, each grimacing in a different way” (422).
b. You have introduced paraphrased materials clearly with a tag and then followed with a citation. Paraphrases do not use quotation marks. Example: According to Richard Ellman, one of the world’s foremost experts in Irish literature, James Joyce set the agenda for an entire generation of modernist writers (422). These words are yours, but the idea is not, so you still must make clear attribution of your source. A Works Cited section must appear at the end of your essay, in MLA format, giving full documentation for the original source.
Essays will be checked for plagiarism using Blackboard’s SafeAssign tool. It compares an essay against those found on the Internet, essay-selling services, and a nationwide database of other students’ essays. It produces a report that shows the original source(s) of plagiarized material.
