EN210: Special Topics: English Epic

First Essay Assignment

 

The first essay is due at the beginning of class on Friday, March 9. The essay should be about 6-7 pages long. You may write on any of the poems that we have studied so far in the course. Here are some suggested topics:

On Beowulf:

On Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

On The Faerie Queene:

Choose one episode from Spenser’s epic and analyze it in depth, explaining the specific details that Spenser provides, the meaning of the full episode, and how the episode dramatizes themes and employs strategies important to the work as a whole. Make sure that your analysis is guided by a specific thesis. Here are some of the episodes you might choose:

Whichever topic you choose, it is extremely important that you have a clear, central thesis. This thesis should be stately clearly and concisely at the beginning of the essay, and that everything in the essay be dedicated to demonstrating this thesis using specific evidence from the text or texts. Note that the thesis of the essay is the one, central idea that you want to convince the reader of. A good thesis is one that can be proven (that is, there is objective evidence in the texts to support it) and that needs to be proven (that is, it is not obvious or self-evident). You therefore need to avoid vagueness and state the thesis with as much specificity 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 in Hacker & Sommers, A Pocket Style Manual. 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.