Essay 2: Literary Research Paper

Are You a Procrastinator? Here's the Test

For the most part, readers react to literature quickly based on what entertains them or what bores them. They neglect to delve deeply and look at the work from many perspectives. The critical strategies (explained in a previous lesson on literary theory) help readers to expand their ideas and approach literary works from various angles. This also helps to keep writers focused on critical thought and away from simple plot summary.

The Assignment:

Choose an author from the list given below (you will have a sign-up sheet–one student per author) and write an analysis of one or two pieces of their work from the perspective of one of the critical strategies of literary theory. You must choose a work from our textbook (not a book you read in high school two years ago). The research paper must follow MLA format and include in-text citations and a works cited page. It needs to be typed, double-spaced, and 6-8 pages in length (the minimum of 6 pages is not counting the works cited page). You should have several outside sources (3-4), two of which need to be from EBSCO-host. You may not write on an author you have already written an essay on this semester (or recycle a paper from another class). Choose someone new. This assignment will be worth 200 pts. and due at the end of the semester.

Points to Remember:

You are not writing the author's biography. You are focusing on their work. However, if you want to demonstrate how aspects of their lives effect their work, you may. Just be sure your focus is analysis, not biography.

Use brief examples (quotes) from the text to support your ideas.

I want to read your words more than other people's words from secondary sources. This means that you may quote briefly from outside sources, but use summary/paraphrase when appropriate as well.

Literary analysis is called criticism, and to find it on EBSCO Discovery, you need to access the AVC Library:

Id and password: avcebsco and library2016

Click "Find Articles and More"

Click "EBSCO Discovery" tab

Click "Search EBSCO Discovery"

Click "Literary Reference Center"

A library hint: if you do a general search of the library database (not EBSCO-Discovery), look the author up under "subject," not "author," when looking for criticism. Under "author" you will only get what he/she wrote. Under "subject" you will get what others have written about the author.

Author List:

Nathanial Hawthorne Toni Cade Bambara Julia Alvarez

Emily Dickinson Ralph Ellison Alice Walker

Stephen Crane Langston Hughes Dagoberto Gilb

Countee Cullen Kate Chopin Ernest Hemingway

Tom Stoppard Theodore Roethke Jamacia Kincaid

Sylvia Plath Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cathy Song

Gwendolyn Brooks Edgar Allen Poe Pat Mora

Claude McKay Dylan Thomas Marge Piercy

Louise Erdrich e.e. cummings Marco Ramirez

James Joyce John Updike

Amy Tan Margaret Atwood

August Wilson William Faulkner