English 509
Fall 2003
Written Assignments

Please find herein your essay assignments.  Your essays should be original, cohesive, clear, well-organised, grammatically and mechanically correct, and addressed to the assigned topics.  Please doublespace and paginate your text and include your name, “English 509,” “Essay [Number],” and the date in the top left corner of the first page.  Place on the first page a brief, straightforward, descriptive title (with no colon) centered above the first paragraph.

(1) Your first essay will be an application of a formalist approach (either Russian Formalism or American New Criticism) or a psychoanalytic approach to a lyric poem from English or American literature.  Please explain briefly the approach that you will employ—its principles and methods—and then apply the approach to solve a particular problem in the poem that the approach has led you to discover.  The paper should be no less than 800 words in length and no more than 1200.  It will be due in class on 6 October 2003.

(2) Your second essay will be theoretical, comparative inquiry into the ways in which any two critical theories (other than formalism or psychoanalysis) treat the question of the relationship of the work of literature to the culture in which the work was produced.  You may, if you choose, refer to a work of literature as an example, but please do so only briefly; your focus should remain on the theoretical issue.  The paper should be no less than 800 words in length and no more than 1200.  It will be due in class on 31 October 2003.

(3) Your third essay will be an application of a critical approach amenable to the interpretation of narrative to Jane Austen’s novel Emma.  Please explain briefly the approach that you will employ—its principles and methods—and then apply the approach to solve a particular problem in the novel that the approach has led you to discover.  The paper should be no less than 800 words in length and no more than 1200.  It will be due in class on 21 November 2003.

(4) Your researched paper will be either (a) an application of a critical approach of your choice (other than one of the formalist methods) to a short literary work of your choice or (b) an investigation of a theoretical question in literary criticism.  You must use print library resources in your research—scholarly books and journal articles.  You may not use any internet resources except for bibliographical indices (to lead you to print library resources) and refereed, online scholarly journals.  The paper should be no less than eight pages in length and no more than ten, exclusive of the Works Cited.  It will be due in class on 5 December 2003.