English 226 Paper 3 Information and Prompts
English 226 Paper 3 Information and Prompts
Your assignment is to write a 4-7 page paper discussing one or more literary texts assigned for this course. The style of Paper 3 should be formal and academic, and the paper should earnestly attempt to answer the question(s) proposed in the writing prompt with detailed, engaging examples from the text to backup your argument; papers should be thoughtful, well-written, and formal in style. Remember that you are building an argument and supporting it, so a specific thesis will help the paper have direction and purpose.
You need not consult secondary sources, and indeed it is our preference that you do not, but if you do, you must properly cite source materials both in-text and with a Works Cited (see the excellent MLA Guide at Purdue OWL for information citations). Please remember that citations are required for quotes from the literature we are reading this semester, too, using MLA* style.
Paper are due by 11:59 p.m. on Nov. 13; work submitted at any point after that will be considered late. Late work will be accepted for up to one week after the original due date, but there will be a two point (20%) penalty for the tardiness. After a week, papers will not be accepted for credit. Only in cases considered excusable—illness with a doctor’s note, hospitalization, etc.—will students will be able to submit late work without penalty.
You will submit papers in two ways: first, you will submit it in the Paper 3 Assignment dropbox on Blackboard. Next, you may email a Word document to your TA, or you may share a Google Doc with your TA. Papers will be returned by email, and paper grades will be posted in the Blackboard Grade Center.
Prompts
Choose one of the following two options:
Option A prompt: To use your own work, begin with an idea you have written about in a forum post, and edit and expand on that idea, fleshing it out into a more fully-formed argument with support.
Option B prompts:
- Write a response paper that evaluates the use of humor in The Importance of Being Earnest. To what end does Wilde employ humor? Is the play always funny?
- Write a paper that addresses Victorian morality in the work of one of these authors: Oscar Wilde, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or Christina Rossetti.
- Do Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories just provide entertainment value or do they tell us something about Victorian culture? Focus primarily on one story assigned for the course, but you may use other assigned stories for support.
- WWI caused a significant break in artistic style and purpose. Discuss the way that the war poems—particularly how they explore ideals of war and nation—compare to Romantic or Victorian poetic styles and intentions (good authors to look at might include Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dante Rossetti).
- Literature produced in the Modern Period is known for its rejection of Victorianism and demonstrable post-war disillusionment. Discuss at least two of the works we read by Eliot, Yeats, and Joyce, examining how these poems show a departure from traditional Victorian literature (perhaps structural, stylistic, or thematic) or disillusionment with life in a post-war world.
- Write a paper comparing one of the Post-Modern poems assigned for to a work—any work—we read earlier in the semester. What differences and similarities do you see? You may want to focus on structure, style, narrative voice, and/or theme.
- Writers from across Britain’s former empire—from the countries that now make up the Commonwealth—clearly express what it means to know and write in English because of the lingering impact of imperialism and colonization. Choose one of the assigned postcolonial texts and discuss how it evaluates or understands writing in the English language.
- Focus on one Angela Carter story and discuss its relationship to the fairy tale from which Carter derived it. What does the fractured tale offer its readers that would be different from the tale as you knew it in childhood? What is the effect of this/these difference(s)?
