English 312 American Literature: Colonial to the Civil War
The Paper Assignment (100 points)
Due Date: on or before Friday, November 17.
This will be your own interpretive research paper of 8-10 double-spaced, typed pages, written on either Walden, by Henry D. Thoreau or The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
For convenience, this link combines the helps for two previous paper assignments. The helps for Walden come first. If you want to write on The Scarlet Letter, you will probably still want to read the Walden material as part of a review of the MLA system of documentation..
Walden
Demonstrate some understanding about
Transcendentalism and Walden’s place in the movement.
Write your own definition of Transcendentalism (based on Emerson and
class discussion) and then discuss various events/descriptions/comments from
both the chapters we read and other chapters in light of your definition.
Although I have assigned only selected chapters, I encourage you to skim
other chapters, looking for ideas that fit your paper.
Also, reading the scholars might help you to choose additional passages
for discussion.
One
of the major purposes of this paper is to acquaint you (or re-acquaint you) with
the Modern Language Association (MLA) system of research documentation, which is
the conventional method of documentation used in the field of literary studies.
.
The
good news is that I have done some research for you for this paper.
I have placed four books on reserve:
The American Adam, by R.W.B. Lewis (read pages 20-27), American
Renaissance, by F.O. Matthiessen (read pages 166-75 and/or 153-57), Henry
David Thoreau’s Walden, edited by Harold Bloom, and Walden and Civil
Disobedience (see the essays by Hendrick, Shanley, Morris, Miller, Baird,
and/or Drinnon. You may also use
essays found using the JSTOR database.
Using
JSTOR: JSTOR is a database of
full-text articles from literary (and other) academic journals.
Here’s how to use it:
1. Go to the Shawu home page; click on Libraries in the right-hand column.
2.
Click on Databases; click JSTOR; at the JSTOR home page, click Search.
3.
Type in key words in the appropriate boxes.
4.
Scroll down, click History and Language & Literature
5. I suggest making the date range 1990 - 2005.
6.
Click Search.
7.
Read the titles and choose articles to read.
I
have discovered three articles on JSTOR that you might want to check into.
White,
Richard. “Discovering Nature in
North America.” Journal of
American
History
79 (1992): 874-891.
JSTOR. Shaw Univ., Raleigh,
NC. 25 Sep 2001.
<www.jstor.org>.
The first 3 pages focus on “Higher Laws.”
Abrams,
Robert E. “Image, Object, and
Perception in Thoreau’s Landscapes:
The Development of Anti-Geography.”
Nineteenth Century Literature 46 (1991):
245-262. JSTOR.
Shaw Univ., Raleigh, NC. 25
Sep 2001. <www.jstor.org>.
About HDT’s methods of observation and meditation.
Gleason,
William. “Re-Creating Walden:
Thoreau’s Economy of Work and
Play.”
American Literature 65 (1993):
673-701. JSTOR.
Shaw Univ., Raleigh, NC.
25
Sep 2001. <www.jstor.org>.
About HDT’s sense of physical health and the relationship
of self to society.
You
may also use NC LIVE. Go to my
English 113 webpage and click “Using
I
expect references to at least five scholars in your paper.
I am picky about several things in student research papers:
giving proper credit to other scholars, quoting correctly from Walden,
not letting your research take over your paper, following manuscript
conventions, and having a correct Works Cited page.
Hopefully, this handout and our class discussion will be enough, but
English majors might want to buy a copy of the MLA Handbook.
The 6th edition (2003) is now available.
Giving
proper credit: In any paragraph
where you use a quotation or paraphrase, you must identify the work and the
author whose words or ideas you are borrowing.
Use this formula: In Title,
author verb, “Quotation” (#). For
example: In Henry David Thoreau,
Richard J. Schneider argues, “These motifs of morning and light merge quite
smoothly with traditional Christian symbols of resurrection” (61). A full identification is necessary the first time you refer
to a work. After that, you can
simply refer to the author. For
example: Schneider further
suggests, “Thoreau is symbolically reintegrated into the village, which he
hopes has by now taken his advice and at least started to wake up” (61).
[However, if you refer to two works by the same author, you will have to
identify which work you are quoting from each time.] Please note that there is no “p.” before the page number.
Note also that the period ending the sentence occurs after the page
reference. If citing an article,
place the article title in quotation marks:
In “Title,” author verb, “Quotation” (#).
How
to quote from Walden: You
need not use the formula for quoting a scholar; simply lead your reader to the
quotation with a phrase that provides some context or part of your argument. Four typed lines or fewer should be quoted as a normal prose
sentence contained within your own sentence:
For example: Thoreau sees it
as his duty to keep his Concord neighbors from becoming complacent about their
lives: “We must learn to reawaken
and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation
of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep” (1765).
You might introduce the chapter you are quoting from.
For example: In “Where I
Lived and What I Lived For,” Thoreau tells us to “Simplify, simplify”
(1760).
A
quotation of more than four lines should be treated as a “block quotation”: indent the left sides of the lines to match the indentation
for a paragraph, and the right side margin is the same as for the rest of the
paper. For example:
It is important to remember that Thoreau was rarely alone in the woods
for a long period of time:
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two
for company,
three for society. When
visitors came in larger and unexpected
numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they
generally
economized the room by standing up.
It is surprising how many great
men and women a small house will contain.
I have had twenty-five or
thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and
yet we often
parted without being aware that we had come very near to one
another.
(1791)
Note
that a block quotation does not require quotation marks; the typography tells
you it is a quotation. Tab to near
the right edge of the sheet after the last line and provide the page number in
the usual fashion, except that the sentence-ending period stays with the
quotation instead of following the page reference.
Not
letting the research rule your paper: I
have three simple rules for student writers:
1) don’t begin a paragraph with a quotation or paraphrase, 2) don’t
end a paragraph with a quotation or paraphrase, and 3) don’t place quotations
back to back. Why have these rules?
They force you to write topic sentences for your paragraphs.
They also force you to write sentences that tell the reader why the
quotation is pertinent to your argument. The
rules also force you to write sentences that connect your ideas from paragraph
to paragraph and within each paragraph. The
metaphor I use is that of a “sandwich.”
Following
manuscript conventions: A title
page is not necessary. Just type
your name and course info in the top left hand corner of page one. Skip two lines and center your title over your first
paragraph. All pages should have
1-inch margins on all four sides and succeeding pages should have a header in
the top right hand corner with your last name and the page number, as you see on
this page. The font should be
standard (usually Helvetica, Geneva, Times New Roman, or Courier. Not italic.)
and it should be 12-point in size. The
lines should be double spaced (I have single-spaced this handout to save paper).
Do not skip an extra line between paragraphs (this is a convention for
single spacing). A paper clip is
best for holding the paper together; a staple is also fine.
Do not waste money on plastic or manila folders.
The
Works Cited page: This should be
the last page of the paper. It
should contain an alphabetical list of all the works referred to in the paper.
For this paper, the Works Cited page should have a minimum of six
entries: five scholarly articles or books and your source for Walden,
which for most of you will be the Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Again, the MLA Handbook will help you determine the correct
formats for your entries. Remember that indentation is the reverse of that for
paragraphs (so that the alphabetized words fall on the left hand margin).
Remember that you type two spaces after a period or a colon and one space
after a comma or semi-colon.
Examples:
1.
A book by a single author:
Kirby-Smith, H.T. The Origins of
Free Verse. Ann Arbor:
U of Michigan P, 1998.
2.
An article published in a book of collected articles:
Fowler, Aaron. “Thoreau’s
Transcendental Bird-Watching.” Essays
on Walden.
Ed. Margaret Drabble. New
York: Oxford UP, 2000.
45-67.
3.
Walden, anthologized in a volume of American literature.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden.
The American Tradition in Literature, 6th ed.
Ed.
George Perkins, et al.
New York: Random House, 1985. 969-1132.
As we read Walden, you may visit me during office hours or call me at home to discuss ideas for your paper. Please bring a rough draft to a conference in my office so that I can help you. I want you to get a good grade.
Warning: Websites such as monkeynotes.com, sparknotes.com, free-essays.com, pinkmonkey.com, and many many similar sites which purport to be "helps" to students are not academic sources and are not acceptable for use in this paper or any in other paper you write in one of my literature classes. Read whatever you want, but don't take anything from these sites.
Another Warning: I will not tolerate plagiarism! Plagiarism is a crime: theft (taking someone else's work) plus fraud (pretending that work is your own). Do not quote or paraphrase anything from any source without proper documentation. This website tells you everything you need to know to avoid plagiarism, but if you aren't sure, document. Bring me a draft and ask if what you have done is correct. Plagiarism of even a single sentence is punishable by getting a zero on your paper with no opportunity for revision. Don't do it. Anything you can find on the internet, I can find on the internet.
Good
luck & good writing!
The Scarlet Letter
Create your own thesis about some critical aspect of TSL and argue your position. Use research to support your argument or to bounce your ideas off of. Use JSTOR and/or NC LIVE. In addition, I have placed five books on reserve:
Male, R.R. Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision. Austin: U of Texas P, 1957.
Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance. New York: Oxford, 1941.
Schubert, Leland. Hawthorne, the Artist. Chapel Hill: UNC P, 1944.
Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1963.
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Office of The Scarlet Letter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991.
I also have three books in my office, which you may read during my office hours:
Male, R.R. Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision. Austin: U of Texas P, 1957.
Chase, Richard. The American Novel and its Tradition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1957.
Waggoner, Hyatt H. The Presence of Hawthorne. Baton Rouge: LSU P, 1979.
Keep in mind, however, that I have read all these books; I am much more interested in reading what you come up with than a rehash of all these authors. So don’t overuse your research. On the other hand, you may do as much additional research as you wish, but in any case, you will cite a minimum of five sources in your paper, one of which must come from JSTOR or NC LIVE. I expect proper use of the MLA system of documentation, both for quotations in your paper and for the Works Cited page. Review the assignment helps for Walden (above) for reminders about the MLA conventions. Please schedule a rough draft conference with me. The more you have completed, the more helpful I can be.
When writing a literary analysis, you are trying to explain some aspect of a poem, story, novel, or play to an audience that also has read the work your paper discusses. You may assume, therefore, that your audience has fairly good knowledge of the work. DO NOT SIMPLY SUMMARIZE THE PLOT OF THE SCARLET LETTER !!! Of course, you will need to summarize portions of the action from time to time, and you may need to quote brief portions to support an argument, but your own interpretation, analysis, or explanation of some particular problem or aspect of the work is much more important. Basically, in a literary analysis, you are writing an argument that says “such & such is a major theme (or controlling image or idea) in this work and here’s how I see it operating and what it all means.”
There are six basic steps that can
carry you through reading a literary work and
writing an essay about it.
1. Make observations while you read. Make notes on action, language,
character,
and technique. Be especially clear about the plot. Even though your
essay
will not be a simple summary, you must be accurate about the incidents you
discuss.
2. Ask questions about the work. This is where the idea for your paper can come from. Try to ask specific rather than broad questions. “Who is Arthur Dimmesdale?” is not as good a question as “How can I describe the relationship between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth?” or “Does Hester understand the load of guilt that Arthur carries around and what it’s doing to him?” or “Why is Pearl obsessed with the A?”
3. Establish connections between observations. Look for patterns and relationships. Oft-noted images in TSL include light/dark, reflective surfaces, the heart and hands, madness, village/forest, spirituality/witchcraft. Strive to understand the characters and why they act the way they do.
4. Develop inferences (informed interpretive guesses) based on these connections. What thematic interpretation(s) does a particular set of images support? Write a thesis. Remember that you are arguing for your particular interpretation of the novel. Remember that Hawthorne said a romance must have a moral. Do you think that TSL has one?
5. Do some research. BUT DON'T do this research until you have done some writing of your own. Read what others have written regarding your questions. With whom do you agree? disagree? You may want to include a refutation of viewpoints different from your own.
6. Draft and revise your essay, formulating a thesis and supporting it with evidence from the text and from research.
Pitfalls to avoid:
1. Do not attempt to write a paper that follows the book from beginning to
end. Why? You are interpreting and
analyzing, not summarizing.
2. Analysis is not plot summary! Summary tells what happened; analysis tells how and why and answers so what questions; evaluation tells how well the writer gets the message(s) across.
3. An analysis is not a list of subjective feelings that the novel calls forth in you -- although a brief analysis of such feeling might add something to your paper, and certainly to your understanding of the book.
Warning: Websites such as monkeynotes.com, sparknotes.com, free-essays.com, pinkmonkey.com, and many many similar sites which purport to be "helps" to students are not academic sources and are not acceptable for use in this paper or any in other paper you write in one of my literature classes. Read whatever you want, but don't take anything from these sites.
Another Warning: I will not tolerate plagiarism! Plagiarism is a crime: theft (taking someone else's work) plus fraud (pretending that work is your own). Do not quote or paraphrase anything from any source without proper documentation. Along with the Walden assignment link, this website tells you everything you need to know to avoid plagiarism, but if you aren't sure, document. Bring me a draft and ask if what you have done is correct. Plagiarism of even a single sentence is punishable by getting a zero on your paper with no opportunity for revision. Don't do it. Anything you can find on the internet, I can find on the internet.
I encourage you to come and talk with me during office hours about any ideas you are kicking around for your paper. But come with something already written down; I can be much more helpful that way. Then you will have a better draft to show me later.