English 331 Critical Essay
Spring 2009
35 pts. Possible (35% of semester score)
Draft due _______ Completed project due. _______
Overview, Instructions, Purpose, Audience
This will be a rigorous interpretive piece in which you develop your own thesis and then argue for that idea in a literary essay about 5-8 pages. Your essay should be on one of the writers or works we've studied this term, it should show some awareness of the critical lens it is using (you're free to choose any theoretical approach you like), and it will require a little research so that you can put your views in context.
Your purpose is to argue for an interesting and original idea, to help an audience of college readers and instructors understand a writer, a work, and/or an issue in a fresh and insightful way, and to help that audience get more out of contemporary literature generally.
Here are some possibilities:
- Write an essay using a feminist lens. Consider how particular characters in a work do or don't stereotype men and women, how a work implicitly defines "gender," or how a work challenges (or reinforces) patriarchal culture. Or consider how a particular writer has been received by critics and the public, and how women writers have been received historically in America. Formulate a good central idea about how the work makes us understand gender, about the work's explicit or implicit political agenda , or about ways in which the work represents the relationship between gender and personal identity.
- Write a traditional formalist essay. That is, focus sharply on a specific text itself, explaining how the various elements of the piece—plot, setting, imagery, point of view, or characterization—contribute to its overarching theme and overall unity. Draw on class discussions throughout the term to help you develop your analysis.
- Write a psychoanalytic essay in which you examine a character's unconscious motives and core issues, or a work's Oedipal dynamics, or ways in which the work is like a dream.
- Write an essay which diagnoses contemporary life
and relationships using the books
we've studied in class this semester. That is, use literature as a kind of "physician's tool" and develop a thesis which answers
one or more of these questions: what are the chief cultural/social problems of postmodern life in America? What do the works we've read say about our understanding of gender in the late 20th and early 21st centuries? About women's
issues, roles, politics, epistemologies? About questions of home and homelessness in a globalized, pluralistic, information-overloaded and possibly neo-imperialist world? About justice and injustice? About the American family or male-female relationships? About alternative and marginalized communities? About any facet of contemporary culture which intriques you?
- Write an
essay which explains how a particular work critiques/interrogates the dominant
culture. That is, how does the work challenge prevailing or traditional
views about women, men, identity, community? What complaints does it implicitly
lodge against the culture and its institutions? How does it problematize or
what questions does it raise about ideas and behavior which we normally take
for granted? How does the work unsettle the reader, disrupt our usual expectations,
or otherwise raise hell?
-
Compare and contrast the works of two writers. Formulate some interesting central point about their key similarities or differences, and about the larger relevance of your comparison.
- Research and examine the life of a particular
writer. Develop a clear purpose: to shed light on that writer's work; to
locate that writer's place among, and influence upon, other writers; to
convince readers that the writer in question should be better acknowledged or
understood in some new way.
-
Select one of the works we've studied and which you feel has been unjustly omitted from literature courses or the canon—or otherwise neglected. Write a persuasive essay in which you argue for the importance of the work, and for its inclusion in college courses, reading lists, personal libraries, academic libraries, etc. You'll need to establish criteria for "good books" or "good literature," then show how the book in question fulfills your criteria. You may also need to argue against prevailing opinions or reviews of the work. Finally, it might be interesting to develop some ideas about what you believe constitutes "women's writing," or a "women's canon."
Remember in all cases that you are developing and supporting an argument and an analysis—not just reporting information.
Evaluation Criteria and Checklist
_____ Clear focus and purpose
_____ Clear method
_____ Clear, consistent, original and relevant thesis
_____ Ample detail and evidence in support of the thesis
_____ Acknowledgement of opposing views and evidence
_____ Good context (awareness—implicit or explicit—of what other critics have said about the work or writer in question
_____ Helpful structure, focused and developed paragraphs, strong paragraph transitions
_____ Sentences edited for clarity, concision, and elegance
_____ Essay proofread for mechanical errors (misspellings, comma splices, unmotivated shifts in person, number, or tense, etc.)
_____ Sources documented using MLA format: in-text citations and a works cited page (you don't need a bibliography)
_____ Sources quoted and paraphrased properly
_____ Manuscript formatted according to MLA guidelines
_____ Approximately 5-7 pages (this is an approximation only; if you can achieve a great argument in a little under 4 pages, or if your argument runs to almost 8 pages, that's fine)
Explanation of Grading
After I read your essay, I assign it a letter grade based on the following:
A = Outstanding (it stands out from the rest; is distinctive and memorable). Especially engaging and complex analysis. Original and well-supported thesis. Clear, organized, well-detailed and fair argument. Essays fulfills all or most of the evaluation criteria extremely well, or, while suffering from a few minor problems, conspicuously excels in most areas of the assignment. 31-35 pts.
B = Very good. Clear, well-supported thesis. Clear, organized, well-detailed and fair argument. Essays fulfills all or most of the evaluation criteria well. It may be noticeably weak in one or two areas, but more than competent in others—or is simply competent (if undistinguished) throughout. 26-30 pts.
C = Ok. Clear thesis, which may not be supported with enough detail—or plenty of detail but an inconsistent or fuzzy thesis. Essay is readable and argument can mostly be followed, though it may lack strong paragraph transitions or structure. Essay fulfills most of the evaluation criteria minimally, or fulfills a few criteria well but many others weakly. 21-25 pts.
D = Poor. Fuzzy topic, unclear approach, and weakly developed thesis, though some idea or ideas are evident. No attention to most of the evaluation criteria, though paper is saved by minimal attention to some key criteria. 16-20 pts.
After assigning your work a letter grade, I fine-tune it with points. (See above.)
