Paper 3 Requirements:
Choose up to 3 poems and / or song lyrics. They do not have to be from the book, but if you use something not in the book, you will need to provide a copy of the works along with your paper as an appendix (you will also need to cite them accurately). The works can be by the same poet / songwriter or be thematically linked. You CANNOT use something that you have already analyzed in the assignments from Weeks 12, 13, and 14.
Do a formalist analysis on the poem(s) / song lyric(s) you have chosen (materials covered in Chapters 16-23).
Length: 3 pages minimum. Cannot exceed 7 pages. This does not include your works cited page or appendix.
Format: MLA (appearance and citation). When you use outside sources (theory or criticism) you must document those sources in MLA style (parenthetical citation and a works cited – this is covered in Chapter 3 and course materials).
Use some type of critical theory, for example: biographical, historical, etc. and write your own criticism (discussed in the Appendix and lecture – you will still need to gather outside information for this type of criticism, as none of you are considered academic critics) or literary criticism (discussed in lecture – found in the PGCC Databases) to further analyze and interpret your subject. You are required to use a minimum of three sources (one source should be the subject your paper focuses on, and you should have at least two sources to meet the critical perspective requirement).
Do not use first person (I, my, me, we, us, our – unless you are using reader response criticism) or second person (you, your) when writing the essay.
The audience for the paper is an academic audience. Academic audiences expect very few (if any) sentence level errors and a professional, formal tone.
Assignment Restrictions:
Your sources must be academic. Using the PGCC databases will take care of this requirement, but you are not limited to them. However, what you use must be credible. Students cannot use the following for a source in your paper: free essay websites, study guides (for example: Sparknotes, Cliffs Notes, GradeSaver, ClassicNotes, Bibliomania, eNotes, Book Rags, etc.), Wikipedia.
