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E211: British Literature to 1760 Paper Prompt and Suggestions Alfred J. Drake | 423 UH | TW 12:45-1:45 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com Formal Prompt: Choose one of the topics below and write a 5-page essay that is clear in its thesis, structure, and language. (You may also choose a topic of your own devising if I approve it in advance and if it is about an author on our syllabus.) 1. Write about one or two poems from among the Wyatt or Surrey selections. Explore the ways in which the speaker manipulates the Tudor and/or Petrarchan formal and thematic conventions that we shall have discussed in class. (An obvious possibility would be to compare one poem by Wyatt with one by Surrey or Sidney.) Addendum: it would be interesting to address the way in which your chosen poems handle the difficulties of court politics and erotic relations. 2. Choose one or two poems by John Donne and explore the affinities between Donne's erotic themes and the spiritual framework that informs his poetry. By what means (poetic devices, style, logic, etc.) does Donne establish and maintain such affinities? 3. Focus on the relationship between any two characters in Shakespeare's King Lear. Explore the significance of that relationship (any changes it undergoes, what binds the two characters or keeps them apart, etc.) to the wider structure of significance at work in the play. 4. Compare and contrast any two philosophical authors--Bacon, Hobbes, Locke on one issue they both address. This is a question for which you would have to read a bit beyond the syllabus. 5. Focus on the difficulties faced by the narrator of Paradise Lost--how does he deal with the need to establish his authority to tell so grand and complex a story as human history in its relation to the eternal goings-on in heaven? 6. Compare the way in which the narrator of Paradise Lost dramatizes the fall of Satan in Books 1-2 with the fall of Adam and Eve in Book 9. What is the same about the transgressions committed, and what is different? Informal Suggestions: Email me or come to an office hour with some ideas about your author/text, I'll respond with some ideas and questions that should help you start drafting the paper. I require that you include with your final draft a copy of some notes or an early draft. I do not require that you turn in a rough draft before the final draft is due, though I suggest that you do so I can comment and return it in time to help for the final draft. The final draft will be due along with the in-class final exam, 8/14. Please look over some of the materials on writing available via hyperlinks on the "Syllabus" page. "Deductive Essays" is particularly recommended because in it I comment on the basics about structure and purpose in college papers. Another set of handouts deals with how to introduce and cite a literary text properly -- that is certainly something every writer needs to know.
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