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Moreover, all I want to see from you at this point is the draft prompt and draft thesis itself; I don’t want to see more than two questions in the prompt, notes or other draft materials, and anything other than the three parts of the thesis itself (which should be clearly identified and separated from each other); in the total, the different parts of the thesis should in total NOT amount to more than 6 sentences). (The specific format is included at the end of these instructions for greater clarity).
formulate a thesis of your own on a topic of your choice; there will be no prompts from me in which you answer one of my questions.
This assignment will ask you to develop the draft of the thesis for your first essay; eventually, you will use the thesis you begin to work on Essay #1. Focusing on the peom “adam curse” by w.b. yeats. No compare and contrast.
My notion of a thesis requires at least three sentences (or possibly more depending on how developed your thesis will be) so that you address all three required parts of the thesis. As part of THIS assignment, you also need to write your own prompt: be sure that you include the question you have written for yourself (and which your thesis serves to answer) at the beginning of the assignment before your thesis. Therefore, your assignment must be at least three sentences long (or longer) to be considered complete and also include your initial question, but the word minimum is a little more open (so: this is the one assignment for this course where you DO NOT need to include a word count).
Follow the instructions below
Choose a work to write about. For the purpose of this assignment, you are permitted to write about only one particular poem or novel. An essay devoted to the comparison of multiple texts is not permitted. Once you have made your choice, I advise a close re-reading of the text in question so that you don’t have to rely on your memory of the first impressions you had when you first read the novel.
Select a Topic. You have complete freedom to write about whatever you like, provided that you choose a topic that allows you to make an argument about the literary work you have chosen to write about. Read the text you choose to write about closely and more than once, and find something that interests you and seems worthy of further interpretation. The most important component to this essay is that you have a very precise, specific, and exact focus in your essay. When you first consider your topic, it is likely that it will be too broad to work well at first; you will need to make it more specific so that you can formulate a claim as to why the topic you have chosen is worth writing about and will enable and sustain an interesting argument (and remember, just because you have noticed something, that doesn’t mean that an argument developed around that topic will inevitably be interesting; making your argument interesting will be up to you, so put pressure on yourself to be creative right from the beginning). Ultimately, you will be writing a thesis that will address the necessary question of “So What? Why is it important to understand this particular argument about the text in question?”
Because it is always far better to begin with the examination of something specific, focused, and precise—and then through your analysis, finally move to a larger level of argumentative claim—you should try to make your initial topic as precise, exact, and seemingly “small” as possible. For example, say you wanted to make some sort of argumentative claim about the effect of a Catholic education on Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. You should not anticipate having some sort of broad thesis that basically states that “Religious doctrine instilled Stephen with a very strong sense of guilt towards any sorts of sexual desire that he eventually resolved by breaking with organized religion and becoming an artist, and here are three examples…” DON’T DO THAT!!! Instead, you should anticipate having a topic that is much more specific. “Religion” is WAY too broad; “Christianity” is slightly more specific, but still too broad (Joyce is not really concerned with Christianity in general, and has no interest in any form of Christianity aside from Catholicism), and so is “Catholicism” (since the book is focused very specifically on a Jansenist-inflected Jesuit education appropriate to the time and setting of the novel in Ireland in the 1890s). “Sexual desire” is a bit vague (and related terms like “guilt,” “morality,” and “immorality” are even vaguer). In each case, you will need to break each of these key terms down MUCH FURTHER in order to make them more specific and appropriate to Joyce’s novel. Remember: you don’t need to write about EVERYTHING you notice in the novel; you just need to write about one thing in particular.
From Topics to Questions. You will be writing your own essay prompt for this assignment. You must formulate a question that you will answer in the form of your essay. You need to develop as strong a question as you can before you write a single word of your essay since you need to know the answer to your own question first. It helps to think of your prompt as something that will have two parts: a first part that asks you to make a central claim about the work (which identifies your topic and the interpretative claim you plan on making about the novel), and a second part which asks you to propose an argument about the significance of that claim once you move outside of the inner world of the novel. (Ultimately—and looking ahead– the first question will ask for an answer that will become part a. of the thesis, explained below; the second question should be asked in relation to part a. of the thesis, and it will eventually become part c. of the thesis).
Here’s a rough general model for the kind of prompt I am looking for: “How does Joyce represent (your topic) in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and why is that significant? Considering that (sense of the significance) what is the larger importance of (your topic) outside of the inner world depicted within the novel?” You are required to include your question at the beginning of this assignment; if you don’t, this assignment will be considered incomplete and will not be graded.
Formulate a Thesis. The basic answer to your prompt will be the basis for your thesis statement. Write a brief answer (at least 3 or more sentences) which clearly answers your own question. There is no need to get too detailed here—you will be doing that in a moment—but you need to state your position in clear and definite terms. This statement will eventually evolve into your thesis.
Revise your Thesis into more precise terms. Take the draft of an answer you have just written and revise it so that it meets the three following needs.
A proper thesis has three necessary parts. It should include:
a. the central claim you are making about your topic which states the precise focus of your argument in a single sentence or two; it should also include your central interpretative claim about your topic. Ideally, it should be an answer to the first question in your prompt.
b. an explanation why that is case based on textual evidence, with an indication which specifies the textual focus of your analysis and organizes the directions your analysis will take (in other words, a road map to the different sections of your essay); it should also specify the main interpretative point you are making about each of these sections. This section might be longerthan a single sentence since it maps out and provides foreshadowing of the essay to come;
MOST IMPORTANTLY: an indication expressing the larger significance of why your claim is worth making in the first place. The third part of the thesis is the most important part—it states the entire purpose and value of your argument. However, this is the part of the thesis which is often missing from essays. This is the area where you will need to state the stakes of your argument; it is where you will need to break out of the interior of the novel you are writing about, and indicate the importance of your argument from outside the terms of the book (I will explain this at length). Imagine someone behind you saying : “alright, that’s an interesting analysis of _____ in Joyce; but so what? Why is this argument worth making in the first place?” This section of the thesis should answer those questions in advance, and will end up providing the basis for the conclusion to your essay. This section should be at least a sentence long, possibly longer. Ideally, it should be an answer to the second question in your prompt.
You will notice by now that the thesis of you essay WILL NOT be a single sentence, but it will be something closer to a half paragraph that is AT LEAST three sentences long and possibly longer. It is fine if it is 4-6 sentences long; but it needs to be more than a single sentence.
The overall quality of the paper will depend on the necessary presence of all three elements of the thesis. You need to work on the quality of the thesis before anything else, and this assignment is to make sure all three elements are present within your thesis before you begin writing– and so I can give you a small bit of direction and feedback in advance.
Edit and finalize your thesis. Edit and revise each section of the thesis so it is as clear, straightforward, and succinct as possible—and that final act will complete the assignment. So: your completed assignment should include the prompt you have written for yourself as well as the thesis to your argument– and it needs to include parts a.,b., and c. described above presented separately from each other. Identify them as such in the assignment; break them up so that they can be clearly identified. Your assignment should look like this:
— Self-devised Prompt (consisting of two questions; the first should produce part a. below, and the second should be asked of part a. below and produce part c.)
— Part a: identification of topic and interpretative claim about the novel or poem for your essay (this part should be 1-2 sentences long)
— Part b: Road map of how you will analyze the novel in the essay which is coming (aka, the central points of each of the paragraphs that are coming in the essay– the early indication of the primary interpretative point you will be making in each section of the novel). It is alright at this point if this part of the thesis is more underdeveloped (you presumably haven’t started outlining or planning the body of your essay yet, and fair enough!), but try to make this section as developed as you can at this point. (this part should be 1-3 sentences long)
— Part c: Larger significance of your argument (aka the answer to the question “So What?”; this part should be one sentence long)
If i see you did a good job following these instructions I will be working further with you to write the entire essay which is 5 pages long, but for now follow theinstructions for this the creation of the prompt and thesis
