English 1900e (2008): Essay 2
Contents
Instructions
For this project, you may write an essay or, if you receive my permission in advance, a creative project (I will give permission for a creative project only to students who scored B+ or higher on their first essays and who discuss their plans with me in advance).
If you are eligible for and choose to ask permission to do a creative project, we will discuss the precise details of your project before you receive my permission.
If you are writing an essay, you should develop your own topic using the techniques we have practiced in class. Some possible starting points for your thinking include:
- The position of the “Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” in Lyrical Ballads. How does this poem reflect (or fail to reflect) the ideological goals for the collection sketched out in the “Advertisement” to the 1798 edition. You could ask the same question about any poem in the collection (albeit with differing results), including “Tinturn Abbey.” You could also compare how two poems in the collection differentially reflect or fails to reflect these ideological goals.
- Form and content. How do Wordsworth and/or Coleridge use metre and diction to enrich the content of their poems. How does the use of form mimic, support, or call attention to different aspects of the meaning?
- What changes in the course of the subsequent publications of Lyrical Ballads? Is the Advertisement to the 1798 edition different ideologically from the subsequent prefaces? Do the poems that were added continue or change the theme of the collection as a whole?
- O’Neill’s play shares some features with what we know of his early life, but it also suppresses much and alters many details quite significantly. At the same time it contains a very personal dedication and O’Neill did not allow the play to be staged during his life. How should we understand the changes he made? Is there a larger significance to these fictional/altered aspects?
- To what extent does this play suggest that the family has reached a resolution? If you think the events represented in the play represent a resolution, what evidence makes you think this? And if not, what evidence makes you think that things are not resolved?
Purpose
The goal of this assignment is to give you some further practice in developing and writing University-level research ideas in literature and to let you apply the techniques of idea generation we have been using in class.
In addition, this essay should be used to address problems you may have had in the first.
Rubric
For this essay, I will be following my standard rubric.
Dues dates, length, etc.
- Due: October 27, 2008. Submit via Turnitin
- Format: Please follow my standard style guide.
- Length: Your essay should be approximately 1800 words (± 10%). This is equivalent to approximately double-spaced 6-8 pages.
