5-page literary analysis paper

Order Description

The literary analysis paper should be based on one of the following books:

—Kinsella, W.P. Shoeless Joe. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982. Print. ISBN: 9780395957738

—Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies. Chapel Hill, N.C: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994. Print. ISBN: 9781565129764

—Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable. 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books, 1940. Print. ISBN: 9780140183955

—Wharton, Edith. Summer. Champaign, Ill: Project Gutenberg, 1990. Internet resource.

Here are the instructions for the paper and the abstract:

Final Paper Abstract

Due Saturday, April 18th

An abstract is a short overview of what your final paper will be about. (Basically a check-in moment.) It is short (between 100- 200 words).

Your abstract should discuss your final literary analysis paper. The abstract should include:

a working thesis statement,
the text, author, and theory you will be writing about,
and a few of your main points.

It should be written in paragraph form and have a working title.

Titles need to be more creative and interesting than “Feminism in ‘Boys and Girls’”. While this does mention what text and theory you are talking about, it gives no direction to what your specific argument is about.

Please read below about the final paper before writing your abstract so you can know what is expected from you.

Final Paper

Due Tuesday, April 28th

Throughout this semester we have discussed many issues affecting humanity. One of the great things about literature is that it connects us to our world(s) in different ways. For your final paper, you will have to consider one of the literary theories we’ve been working with and apply it to a text we have read.

So, officially: write a 5-page literary analysis paper that provides a developed, thesis-driven argument and incorporates one of the literary theories we’ve talked about or read about in Lenses. For this paper you will have to choose one literary text we’ve read this semester, connect it to one of the theories, develop an argument, and support your thesis with evidence from the literature of your choice.

You may want to do some outside research to strengthen and support your argument, but outside research is not mandated in this paper. If you do outside research, please remember this is still an academic paper and wikipedia (etc.) does not count as a scholarly source.

Possible theories we’ve discussed are:

Feminist Theory

New Historicism

Marxist Criticism

Queer Theory

Postcolonial Theory

Regionalism/Local Color (including Insider/Outsider)

Theories of Place (from vs. of)

If there is another theory or avenue you would like to take with this paper, email me before the abstract due date (4/18/15):

Again, the goal in each paper is to develop your own original argument about a text, rather than to repeat what we already have discussed in class. By “original,” I mean attending to questions, issues, and/or sections of the text that we have not addressed. Your paper need not say something that no one else has ever said; it simply needs to strike out in a direction that we have not covered with respect to the text(s) about which you’re writing, which can include ideas and problems we discussed with respect to other texts. Ask yourself what interests you about the text(s), and use that answer as a way of guiding you to your own interpretation.

Things to Note:

Your paper must have a thesis statement.
You should quote/paraphrase sections of the novel, short story, or song you choose. There is no minimum or maximum number of citations needed; just make sure you have enough to support your thesis.
You must have a Works Cited page, which does not count as a page of writing.
If you use my lectures or Lenses for information or to quote, you MUST cite these. See Purdue Owl for help with citations. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ (Links to an external site.)
You must follow MLA guidelines: Times New Roman, 12 pt font with 1” margins, double-spaced.
For every ½ page your paper is short of the required page length, 5% will be deducted from your grade.