Critical Research Paper

Your critical essay will involve analyzing a literary text or texts from our selected readings. The primary reason for the research paper is to demonstrate your ability to apply the knowledge you have acquired about a specific topic in order to develop a working thesis. It’s important that you take a clear stand in your essay. Be sure to include relevant and insightful secondary sources, which might support an aspect of your own argument or might provide counter-arguments against which you can articulate and support your own position. Rather than simply “repackaging” the conventional wisdom about one of our authors or topics, the best essays will address a topic that has received little attention, is controversial, or lends itself to multiple interpretations. Less arguable thesis statements often lead to plot summary, so be sure that you’re working with a truly arguable claim–a position with plausible counter-arguments and one that you’ll have to work to convince other critical readers of.

Taking into consideration the above information, you may undertake several approaches in your research, such as comparing and contrasting more than one text or honing in on a narrow aspect of one text. Your argument may relate to a theme, aesthetic approach, character type, symbol, image, recurring conflict, etc. You might analyze how one of the key terms in Gothic / Horror Literature that we studied this term plays out in a course text. You might situate a text within a particular cultural context–reading between other texts of the period, for instance, with the focus on a narrow topic–to make an argument about the piece of literature.

Your literary text(s) you choose to analyze must be from our selected course readings. Be sure to include at least five additional sources, which may include scholarly literary criticism, historical criticism, and primary materials that directly inform and support your argument. When you work with criticism, be sure to contextualize quotations before you offer them and always be explicit about the relationship between the critical argument and your own position (Do you agree with the critic’s point wholly, with only a part of it, or not at all, and why?). Always incorporate quotations into original sentences, and use block quotations sparingly within an essay: Quote at length only material with which you’ll be working extensively whose particular language is important to your use of the material. Otherwise, you might paraphrase the larger passage and quote only those clauses with which you’re closely working. The latter seems more appropriate for our essay length.

Please follow the MLA format for documentation and mechanics. Your paper should be approximately 6-8 pages in length. Please Note: Wikipedia, SparkNotes, Cliff’s Notes, Schmoop, etc. are NOT acceptable sources.

Provided source(s): https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/3206/the-assignation/

https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/5377/the-oval-portrait/