Brit Lit Spring 07 Second Essay

British Literature I

Second Essay Assignment

The second essay will be due at the beginning of class on Monday, April 30. However, you may hand the essay in at any time up until noon on Wednesday, May 2. If you do not submit the paper in class, please place it in the box on the door of my office, Donnarumma 120.

You will be able to pick up the graded paper with my comments by noon on Tuesday, May 8. You will then have the option of revising the essay. All revisions must be submitted with the original draft by the beginning of the final exam at 9:00 AM on Friday, May 11.

The essay should be approximately 5 pages in length. You have two options for the topic:

OPTION 1:

Carefully compare and contrast any two of the poems we studied by Shakespeare or Donne.

You are free to choose the poems and the themes that you want to address, but here are some suggestions:

The first 126 of Shakespeare's sonnets seem to be addressed to a fair young man; the remaing sonnets are addressed to a "dark lady." Does it matter to whom the poem is addressed? Compare one of the poems to the young man to one of the poems to the lady. What do the differences reveal about Shakespeare's conceptions in this sonnet sequence of ideal love, beauty, sex, or gender?

Throughout his sonnets, Shakespeare returns time and again to themes of beauty, time, and art. Compare and contrast two poems on this theme to show Shakespeare's various images, ideas, and conclusions.

Few of Donne's love poems are in sonnet form, but most of them take up conceits, images, themes, or lyric perspectives familiar from Renaissance sonnet sequences. Compare and contrast one of Donne's love poems to one of Shakespeare's sonnets, demonstrating both their similarities and their most significant differences.

Compare and contrast two poems by Donne that offer differing views on women, men, sex, and love. You might choose two of the numerous poems that dramatize both the love and the tensions between men and women through a scene of lovers parting or resisting parting: "The Sun Rising"; "Song: Sweetest love, I do not go"; "Break of Day"; "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." You might focus on the rhetoric of sex and seduction in "The Flea" or "Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed." You might look for similarities as well as differences between one of Donne's poems in praise of romantic love ("The Good Morrow," "The Sun Rising," "The Canonization," "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning") and one of his cynical rejections of idealized love ("Song: Go and catch a falling star," "The Indifferent," "Love's Alchemy," "The Apparition").

Many of Donne's love poems use religious images and metaphors; many of his religious poems use erotic metaphors and language. Compare and contrast one of his poems about romantic love or sex to one of his "Holy Sonnets." What do the similarities and the differences reveal about Donne's conceptions of sex or spirituality?

OPTION 2:

"Good my complexion!" Rosalind shouts at Celia at one point, "Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?" (3.2.191-193) That is, Rosalind is challenging Celia to say whether the masculine clothes she is wearing give her a masculine character, or whether she preserves a feminine "complexion" (temperament or character) no matter what she wears. The answer that Rosalind expects to this question is not entirely clear. Does the play itself ever come around to offering a definitive answer?

Write a paper analyzing the representation of gender in Shakespeare's As You Like It, with particular attention to the problem of whether the play ultimately asserts that differences between men and women are innate and natural, or conventional and artificial.

THESIS:

Nothing is more important to your essay than that you clearly state a precise thesis. The thesis is the single, central idea that the essay means to convey to the reader. A good thesis is one that can be proven (that is, it can be demonstrated with evidence from the texts) and that needs to be proven (that is, it is not self-evident). Avoid vagueness! Make your thesis as precise and as specific as possible.

FORMAT:

All submitted papers should follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting a paper. These guidelines can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., which is available in the Reference Section of the library and in the Writing Center, but they are also summarized on pp. 148-150 of Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual, with sample pages on pp. 151-154. When commenting on your essays, I will refer to Hacker on matters of format and style.

Following the MLA style, all papers should cite their sources on every occasion that they are used, and all paper should include a complete list of works cited.

When quoting passages from poems, you should cite line numbers, not page numbers. And be sure to maintain line breaks. When quoting from Shakespeare's plays, you should cite the act, scene, and line numbers, not page numbers. See Hacker, Pocket Style Manual. p. 126-127.