EN210:
Special Topics: English Epic
Second
Essay Assignment
The second essay is due at the beginning of
the last class, on Tuesday, May 1. The paper may be submitted, however, at
any time up to noon on Friday, May 4. If you submit the paper after the last
class, place it in the box on the door of my office, Donnarumma 120.
The essay should be approximately 6-8 pages
in length. It may be on either Milton’s Paradise Lost or Pope’s
The Rape of the Lock. Below are suggested topics; if you have a different
topic that you would like to write on, please discuss it with me. Whatever
your topic, it is extremely important that you have a clear, central thesis.
This thesis should be stated clearly and concisely at the beginning of the
essay, and everything in the essay should 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.
Secondary critical sources are not required
for this essay, and in fact I am most interested in your close engagement
with the primary text and your development and defense of an original argument.
Of course, you are always free to consult other sources, but remember that
all sources, primary and secondary, must be fully cited on every occasion
that you use their words or ideas, and must be listed in a bibliography at
the end of the essay. Use the MLA Style of citation and documentation, as
described in Hacker and Sommers, A Pocket Style Manual, as well as
in other sources.
Here are the suggested topics:
-
Epic conventionally relates the exploits
of a hero. Is this true of Paradise Lost? Is there a hero? If so,
who is it? Is Milton challenging the traditional ideas of what makes a hero?
Is he perhaps challenging the idea of heroism itself? Choose a character
in the poem and make an argument for how Milton is using this figure to
revise or to refute conventional ideas of heroism.
-
Milton is clearly interested in using the
original man and woman to depict the essential qualities of men and women
and the basis of gender relations. Write a paper about the representation
of male or female sex, or masculine or feminine genders, or marriage and
sex in society, in Paradise Lost. This is a vast, challenging,
and contentious topic, so you may wish to focus your argument on a specific
theme or issue or to concentrate on a particular portion of the text. For
instance, you could return to the “Separation Colloquy” of Book
9 and make a case, based on the material that precedes it as well as the
events that follow it, for whether Eve is right or wrong in insisting on
her right to separate from Adam to experience the world and the presence
of evil on her own.
-
While Paradise Lost incorporates
material from classical epics and from the Bible, it also addresses the
history, politics, and culture of Milton’s England and considers the
prospects of society and the individual in the aftermath of the English
Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration. Write an essay in which
you explain how the events of Paradise Lost relate to seventeenth-century
English history and what the poem ultimately says about politics in general—that
is, how according to Milton mankind should approach politics in the context
of God’s cosmic scheme for human history. In responding to this topic,
you may want to refer to the headnotes on “The Early Seventeenth Century”
and on John Milton in the Norton Anthology of English Literature.
-
The Rape of the Lock is a “mock
epic.” Is it mocking epic? Or is Pope using epic forms and conventions
to satirize elements of his own time and culture? Write an essay on the
role of epic—its tone; its conventions; its tradition, including echoes
of English epics like Paradise Lost—in The Rape of the
Lock.
-
It is often assumed that the epics expresses
the character or ideals of a nation. Is this also true of a mock epic like
Rape of the Lock? Explain how Pope uses The Rape of the Lock
to depict the character of England, or Britain, in his time and at his particular
point in history.
-
The ostensible hero of The Rape of the
Lock is a beautiful, privileged, superficial young woman. He apparently
uses Belinda to satirize the his own age and culture—but is this fair
to women? Is femininity itself the object of his satire? Or is he perhaps
praising something in Belinda and her sex, as opposed to the traditional
objects of epic? Is Pope’s poem a feminine epic? Write about the use
and representation of gender in The Rape of the Lock.