ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

1. Select an Essay option

2. Select a Literary Studies Perspective.

2. Apply this perspective to the author/work in 700 word essay.

3. Support your thesis by citing at least three secondary sources in the body of your paper. Also include a Works Cited. See the example essay for further help.

ESSAY 1 OPTIONS:

1.     The Angles and the Saxons were "Germanic" tribes ("Germanic" being a linguistic and racial designation: "Germany" was not created until 1871---by the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck). One of the great poems of the people who remained in the area of modern-day Germany is The Song of the Nibelung (an epic, written down about A.D. 1200, probably originating centuries earlier). Compare this epic to Beowulf, focusing on the theme of betrayal, interpreting the significance of the similarities and differences.

 

2.     Epics are common to nearly all cultures. In Essay Assignment 1, you were asked to compare Beowulf with another Germanic epic. Now, compare Beowulf with an epic from a non-European culture (African, Asian, Indian, Native American, Polynesian, or Semitic for example).

 

3.     Discuss Shakespeare’s representation  of authority in the works that we examined in class: Measure for Measure, King Lear, Twelfth Night, and Richard III.

 

4.     Compare the concept of evil in two or more works that we discussed in class.

 

5.     How did the modernists revolutionize literature? Do you approve or disapprove of these changes? Why? As evidence, use the works that we discussed in class.

 

HINTS FOR WRITING AN ESSAY AND A SAMPLE ESSAY

 

I. Use of secondary sources

a). You must use at least three secondary/critical sources for each paper. A secondary source (article or book) is one other than the work itself. For example, a secondary source for The Canterbury Tales would not be The Canterbury Tales. Instead, an example of a secondary source would be "Chaucer and the Medieval Church."

b). Where do you find these sources?

i). Use the computer catalog to locate the call numbers of most books by and about the author.

ii). Most of these books are grouped together in the same area of the library. Go to this area and browse.

iii). The best places to browse are the table of contents and, especially, the index in the back of the book.

iv). Also consult handbooks, guidebooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, on the second floor of the library.

v). Do not use the Norton text or the class notes as a secondary source. Although, strictly speaking, these can be cited as secondary sources (the introductions in the Norton text), you should be able to locate other secondary sources.

AN EXAMPLE OF LOCATING AND USING SECONDARY SOURCES:

Suppose I want to find material on Alexander Pope's view of nature. I would follow these easy steps:

1. I go to the computer catalog and enter ALEXANDER POPE under AUTHOR (or SUBJECT). Most of these books have similar call letters, so I write down the exact call number of one of these books and find its location on the second and third floors of the library.

2. I find the book located among dozens of other books by and about Pope. I browse through these books.

3. I go through several books about Pope (e.g. Maynard Mack's Alexander Pope: A Life and The Garden and the City). I look in the indexes of these books, under "Nature." Most books have this entry, but some don't. Others have the topic listed under "Pope: and nature." These entries tell me on which pages the author discusses Pope and nature, so I don't have to read the entire book to find the specific topic.

4. Although I obtain considerable information from the books, I still want more information. Consequently, I stop on the second floor of the library and consult some reference works, such as The Oxford Companion to English Literature. I look under "Pope, Alexander" for a little more on his views on nature.

5. I also use the on-line computer indexes to locate essays on the subject. The library teaches classes on how to use these indexes that probably would be well worth the time (an hour or two); my internet site includes a link to these indexes, the most helpful, in regards to literature, being the MLA Bibliography.

 

EXAMPLE ESSAY

Nature in the Eighteenth Century

 

     Nature in the 18th century was more than falling leaves, snowy mountains, rainstorms, or raging seas. Nature, in fact, was everything. More particularly, though, nature denoted the laws that generated nature, laws designed by an omnipotent and all-good Creator. This belief was powerfully expressed in the literature of the period that addressed the "nature" of society, of man, and of the physical landscape.

 

     Nature was often viewed in the 18th century as a model for society. The same laws that governed the harmonious working of creation should be discovered and imitated to ensure a prosperous and well-ordered state. Pope's advice to poets is equally applicable to statesmen: "First follow Nature and your judgment frame / By her just standard . . . One clear, unchanged, and universal light" (Essay on Criticism 68-71) [NOTICE THAT I CITE THE POEM BY LINE NUMBER AND NOT PAGE NUMBER]. Conversely, a repeated theme of Augustan literature is that ignorance or perversion of nature's laws produces disaster. For example, the "anarchic sprawl" of Pope's Dunciad is the direct result of "the inverted norms expressive of the dunce world" (Mack 461) [QUOTE FOUND BY USING INDEX: "DUNCIAD": THERE WERE SEVERAL PAGES LISTED. I WENT TO SINGLE LARGEST CLUSTER OF PAGES: 457-82]. Similarly, Swift in Gulliver's Travels satirizes those who refuse to conform to nature's laws. Such individuals are characterized as unnatural yahoos, depraved humans who are contrasted with rational, civilized, and "natural" horses.

 

     The 18th century believed that people were linked to nature by the intellect, rather than with the emotions. Consequently, as Donald Greene points out about Dr. Johnson, neo-classicists thought that "poetry should not surprise but . . . `should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts' " (164) [QUOTE FOUND BY USING INDEX: "COLLINS, WILLIAM"]. Such a "nature" often was compared to an intricate, flawless, and perpetual watch. If man could, through use of his intellect, conform to the pattern evident in this intricate device, he would enjoy the greatest happiness, success, and prosperity. Consequently, in Windsor Forest, "Pope's object was not to depict his individual response to Nature, or, as the Romantic poets would do, record his own perplexed emotions, but to portray a universe that enclosed and completed both the aspiring thoughts and the triumphant works of Man" (Quennell 51) [QUOTE FOUND BY USING INDEX: "POPE, ALEXANDER: WORKS: WINDSOR FOREST:" THERE WERE SEVERAL PAGES LISTED. I WENT TO SINGLE LARGEST CLUSTER OF PAGES: 48-52 ]. Pope would later explicitly formulate this view in Essay on Criticism, arguing that Nature is "at once the source, and end, and test of art" (Essay on Criticism 73). Other poets such as James Thomson in The Seasons went a step further, insisting on nature as "culminating in man" (Tillotson 218) [QUOTE FOUND BY USING INDEX: "NATURE:" THERE WERE SEVERAL PAGES LISTED. I WENT TO SINGLE LARGEST CLUSTER OF PAGES: 217ff].

 

     The 18th century also had an intense interest in the beauties of nature. In some ways these views were unique to the age, and in other ways they anticipate the Romantic era. Pope describes Windsor forest as "large, windy, irregular, unconfined" and complete with "mazy walks and unexpected prospects . . . secret grassy glades, its patches of wild heath"---descriptions that are "half-baroque and half romantic" (Quennell 51-52) [QUOTE FOUND BY USING INDEX: "POPE, ALEXANDER: WORKS: WINDSOR FOREST:" THERE WERE SEVERAL PAGES LISTED. I WENT TO SINGLE LARGEST CLUSTER OF PAGES: 48-52 ]. Perhaps less than half romantic, because the 18th century was characterized by a distinctive taste for ordered and cultivated natural scenery that was dismissed as artificial by the Romantics. Even a purported "neo-classical romantic" like Thomas Gray would do little more than "jot down some appreciative comments" about the savage beauty of nature (Greene 8) [QUOTE FOUND BY USING INDEX: "NATURE"].

 

     Clearly, the 18th century view of nature tells us much about this age and its insistence on order, clarity, and reason. However, this essay has explored only the surface of a very complex topic. In order to obtain a more comprehensive view of this vast and difficult topic, a much more extensive analysis would be required.

 

WORKS CITED

 

Greene, Donald. The Age of Exuberance: Backgrounds to Eighteenth-Century Literature. New York: Random     House, 1970.

Mack, Maynard. Alexander Pope: A Life. New York: Norton, 1988.

Quennell, Peter. Alexander Pope: The Education of Genius 1688-1728. New York: Stein and Day, 1968.

Tillotson, Geoffrey. "Eighteenth-Century Poetic Diction." In Eighteenth-Century Literature: Modern Essays in   Criticism. Ed. James Clifford. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. 212-232.

 

NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

1. TILLOTSON'S ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN 1939. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO INCLUDE THE ORIGINAL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OF REPRINTED MATERIAL FOR THESE ESSAYS (ALTHOUGH YOU DO FOR SOME PAPERS).

2. I DID NOT INCLUDE THE SOURCE FOR POPE'S POETRY AND NEITHER DO YOU. THE SOURCE IS A PRIMARY SOURCE THAT I DO NOT QUOTE BECAUSE THE TEXT WOULD APPEAR THE SAME IN ALMOST ANY EDITION OF POPE'S POETRY.