5 Page Essay

Prof. Tromanhauser

English 303: Intro to British Literature

Essay 2: The Research Paper

5-6 pages, double-spaced, 12-point font

DUE FRIDAY, December 7

Write an essay on the topic of your choice that focuses upon either a single work of substantial length

(play, short story, novella, long poem) or a couple of shorter lyric poems from the nineteenth century

onward: Romantic, Victorian, Modernist or near contemporary periods. Your analysis must incorporate

at least two secondary sources (i.e. works of scholarly criticism including books, book chapters, and

journal articles). Of these, at least one needs to be recent (published after 2000). While chapters and

articles accessed through Sojourner Truth Library’s databases such as JSTOR, Project Muse, ProQuest,

and Ebrary are acceptable, non-scholarly on-line sources do not count. Be sure to provide a full

bibliographic citation in MLA format for your sources. For help with proper citation procedure, you

check out this website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ The following list of possible topics is by no means comprehensive, and is meant simply to get the ball

rolling. Choose a subject that excites you, not just one that seems dutiful:

—sexuality, sexual deviance, and neurosis

—crime and the psychopathology of everyday life

—narrative, trauma, and memory (war, cultural upheaval, sexual violation, apocalypse and the end of

time, etc.)

—literature and the language of science (e.g. the science of evolution, detection, medicine,

psychoanalysis, etc.)

—technology and the body; industry and the organism; human and the posthuman

—species difference (humanity and its disavowed others: animals or animality, monsters, machines)

—spirituality, mysticism, and the occult

—literature and the visual arts (comparing the former with the painting, photography, cinema of its

historical moment)

—texts and their adaptations (painterly, theatrical, cinematic), but bear in mind that, say,

a film version of Jekyll and Hyde is a primary, not a secondary, source

Be sure to give your essay an original title. And, as always, you will be evaluated on the basis of the

criteria outlined in “Guidelines for Close Reading” on Blackboard.