Consistent with the thematic units of the course, this essay asks that you explore one or two of the literary texts on the syllabus from the perspective of one of the following course themes: heroism, love, desire, tragedy, social diversity, and social change. You may choose any text(s) for analysis and investigate it through any one of the themes. Please note well that this essay asks for you to determine what comment the author is making about the theme in question. The paper cannot merely report that the theme emerges in the work because that kind of perspective is typically self-evident and provides no basis for argument.
Claim. Be sure to include a clear, arguable claim that states how the text(s) develops the theme in question. For instance, you might pick Rossetti’s Goblin Market in combination with García Márquez’s “Death Constant Beyond Love” and claim that both works show how desire tempts people to lose control of their reason and may even have lethal consequences. Another approach may involve analyzing Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock for the superficial qualities that his culture views as heroic or to investigate how Life of a Sensuous Woman seems to depict the challenges women in this time and place experience in gaining lives of respect and dignity. A solid claim always requires your providing a strong supply of evidence for demonstration.
Development. Through the use of quotations and paraphrases, assemble enough relevant textual evidence to sufficiently backup the claim. Also, craft an introduction, body, and conclusion to give your essay the shape and focus demanded by its audience.
For this paper, you must integrate evidence from the primary text(s) as well as from two secondary sources, which must be of the scholarly variety. Excellent databases for scholarly articles include The Literary Reference Center, Literature Online (LION) (ProQuest), and MLA International Bibliography. Access them through GALILEO and cite them using MLA style on a separate Works Cited page. You may also use paper sources found in MGA libraries, but under no circumstances draw on any sources, such as Wikipedia, found on the Web.
Audience. Attend to your academic audience’s needs. Anticipate its knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases about your claim (especially if you pose a controversial claim).
Cohesion. Deploy words, phrases, and clauses as well as varied syntax (word order) to link the major sections of the text. The sense of cohesion generated should also clarify the relationship between the claim and evidence.
Conventions. Modify your language to create a formal, objective tone that demonstrates standard English conventions of usage and mechanics while attending to the norms of MLA Style. Such norms include the use of one-inch margins, headers, double spacing, italics for titles (e.g. Endgame), quotation marks for titles of short stories and poems (e.g. “To Autumn”), Times New Roman or Calibri font size twelve, and documentation (in-text citations and a Works Cited page). The essay should be approximately one thousand words in length.
