Topic I:
Compose a 700‑word essay in which you develop this thesis statement:
Contrary to popular belief, the Victorians enjoyed a much more varied, richer,
and freer literature than readers in the 20th century. Or you can
argue the reverse, the superiority of Modernist to Victorian literature.
Sample Outline of Essay
Sample Title: Victorian and
Modern Literature
Paragraph 1: Introduction:
Introduce the topic and state the thesis
Paragraph 2: Social impact of
literature
Sample topic sentence: In
Victorian times the author was a social force; today s/he is a harmless
grotesque, talk‑show guest, or cyber-void.
Supporting evidence:
A. The social impact of Dickens' novels
B. T. S. Eliot's social “activism”
C. Politics and James Joyce
Paragraph 3: Popular genres
of literature
Sample topic sentence:
Victorian literature was much more varied than what we read today.
Supporting evidence:
A. Victorian genres: histories, sermons,
social critiques, political arguments, scientific and religious debates,
aesthetic questions‑‑‑all treated in and as popular forms of
literature.
B. Modernist “masterpieces” are unreadable for
average reader: ex.
Paragraph 4: Relevance of
literature
Sample topic sentence: Where
Victorians perceived literature as a vital art form, literature is now often
seen as an outdated medium.
Supporting evidence:
A. Serialization of novels in Victorian period
B. Career of Matthew Arnold
C. Impact of TV, Film, and Radio in 20th
century
Paragraph 5: Conclusion:
Summary of main points
Topic II:
Compose a 700‑word essay in which you develop this thesis statement:
While critics write of Dickens' mature masterpieces, actually his early work is
much better than his later novels.
Sample Outline of Essay
Sample Title: Dickens:
Younger and Better
Paragraph 1: Introduction:
Introduce the topic and state the thesis
Paragraph 2 Sample topic
sentence: Dickens early work (1836-44) contains most of his most memorable
characters
Supporting
evidence: Pickwick, Fagin, Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, Squeers,
Ralph Nickleby, Quilp, Sampson and Sally Brass, Pecksiff, Jonas Chuzzlewit, and
Scrooge. It is difficult to think
of many characters after Bleak House (1853)---only the names of the characters.
Paragraph 3: Sample topic sentence: This
brilliant creativity clearly climaxes 1846-53---usually called Dickens's
"middle period."
Supporting
evidence: Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and Bleak House.
Paragraph 4: Sample topic
sentence: After this, other than the sentimental A Tale of Two Cities, it is difficult to find Dickens' brilliant
intensity.
Supporting
evidence: Our Mutual Friend, Little Dorrit,
and the greatly overrated Great
Expectations.
Paragraph 5: Conclusion:
Summary of main points
Topic III:
Compose a 700‑word essay in which you develop this thesis statement: Is
20th-century English Literature a Failure? (Note:
You can argue either way)
Sample Outline of Essay
Sample Title: Is 20th-century
English Literature a Failure? (Note: You
can argue either way)
Paragraph 1: Introduction:
Introduce the topic and state the thesis
Paragraph 2 Sample topic
sentence: The most influential modernist poet, T. S. Eliot, did not write
enough to be a major poet. Or Though
the Eliot canon is sometimes critiqued as insubstantial, the perfection of a
few poems more than justifies Eliot as the primary modernist poet.
Supporting
evidence: A survey of Eliot's poetry.
Paragraph 3: Sample topic
sentence: Several of the modernist writers clashed with public officials---and
the public often sided with the officials.
Supporting
evidence: Joyce and Lawrence obscenity charges; Pound's fascism.
Or
Sample topic sentence:
Modernist writers often claimed new cultural territory, enabling an
unprecedented literary freedom.
Supporting evidence: Joyce
and Lawrence obscenity charges; Pound's fascism
Paragraph 4: Sample topic
sentence: Cultural authority also tended to disappear as English authors were
no longer English.
Supporting evidence: Eliot
was an American who became English; Auden was an Englishman who became
American; Joyce was Irish and Thomas was Welsh.
Or
Sample topic sentence:
English literature, by including authors who had been marginalized or alien, revitalized
an English literature that had been sapped by Victorian insularity.
Supporting evidence: Eliot
was an American who became English; Auden was an Englishman who became
American; Joyce was Irish and Thomas was Welsh.
Paragraph 5: Conclusion: Summary
of main points
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
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
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.
Mack, Maynard. Alexander Pope: A Life.
Quennell, Peter. Alexander
Pope: The Education of Genius 1688-1728.
Tillotson, Geoffrey. "Eighteenth-Century
Poetic Diction." In Eighteenth-Century
Literature: Modern Essays in Criticism.
Ed. James Clifford.
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.