English 1302 The Research Paper Topic
Directions: Choose to discuss one of the topics below. You are explaining to us things we ignored, are not aware of, or did not understand on our first reading of The Glassblower of Murano.
Tips: Avoid rewriting a biography of the author and avoid summarizing the plot.
Consult and correctly document secondary sources where they can help enlarge, defend, or give contrast to your close reading of the novel. Be sure to avoid the most elementary sources like, say, Webster’s Dictionary and Wikipedia. Use Wikipedia as a source and the paper will fail: it is an unstable source, changing daily and sometimes the editors are uninformed, and the data is dead wrong. However, also remember I am most interested in your own meditations on these problems, so do not broadcast so many thoughts from critics that I cannot see your mind at work.
Use the computer catalog to find relevant critical books in the Library and consult Databases to locate needed articles and interviews in literary journals, along with doing a Google Scholar search for any more. (Even the free “Look Inside” feature at Amazon.com, and sometimes Barnes&Noble.com, has let me find a chapter or two that was very helpful to my research, especially if our library system doesn’t have the book, and if our Inter Library Loan partners do not, either. The database ProQuest and others may have some helpful articles, and you can access this from home by logging into our Lone Star library.
If we don’t proofread your finished paper a couple times before submitting it, leaving behind lots of grammar, MLA format, and flow problems, the paper will probably get a “D or “F.” For instance, be sure to give credit to sources the right way, introduce them with smoothness, and use correct form as you list them on the Works Cited. Don’t get lazy and let sloppy form steal your credibility and sour your grade. Do not use any form of generative AI for this assn., or the grade will become zero.
Length: Minimum of seven typed pages, the works cited page being the seventh. (12 point font, with margins of one inch each, and numbered pages.)
Topic:
1. Motive
Many critics find a problem to write on by recalling decisions and actions that seem most puzzling, contradictory, or inexplicable, even after a second or third reading of the work. Try this technique: What five or more thoughts, remarks, and actions remain the greatest mysteries in The Glassblower of Murano, and how do you explain them?
Survey what at least five critics or reviewers say to explain these unexpected and inconsistent thoughts and motives from characters, citing at least one critic per mystery. Where do you agree with critics, where do you disagree with them and why, and where do you find new interpretations for what characters do and say?
The characters may be the major ones, or you may also look at characters who have marginal rules, including the king of France, the spies for Venice, the Council of the Ten, the occasional assassin and the priests, and some of the (non-Manin family member) glassblowers at the factory in Murano.
