British Literature Survey
Path 2: Paper Assignment

Audience: literary critics intimately familiar with the poems and/or novels you have selected
Purpose: to prove the validity of your debatable thesis, supported by close, creative analysis of two or more Path 2 readings
Voice: professional and formal (avoid 1st-person pronouns, contractions, colloquial speech, etc.)

Essays should be 8-10 pages in length, include an additional Works Cited page, and follow MLA guidelines for citation. Use a Times New Roman, 12 pt font with 1" margins top, bottom, right and left (1" is not the default margin in Word, so you'll need to change it.)

Your paper should reflect an intimate familiarity with the Path 2 texts you have been reading this semester. You have free reign of topic and argument--just be sure to construct a narrow argument, supported closely by relevant detail. You may think the length provides you the freedom to ramble--think again. Every sentence should be packed with meaning, and each word used should be the most exact, powerful word possible given its context. Your claims should explode off the page.

Essays may analyze any combination of your Path 2 texts, and may engage Path 1 readings tangentially (e.g. to help set up or refine your argument). Possible approaches might involve analyses of voice, characterization, metaphor, prosody, tone, theme, biography, gender, or faith.

Choose a topic you find compelling, and shape an argument you can enjoy making. Consider pouring over your old Path 2 entries and your class notes to help you flesh out your ideas.

Also, be sure to include references to 2-3 outside sources (journal articles, book chapters, introductions from your novels, etc.). These should be listed in your Works Cited page. (Be sure to include the novels themselves in this list.)

Possible topics might include but are by no means limited to:

• an analysis of how narrative voice shapes tone, theme, or characterization
• a comparison of two similar yet vitally different characters
• the argument that a seemingly unsympathetic voice/character actually deserves reconsideration, or vice versa
• a consideration of how form (prosody, diction, sentence length, etc.) informs and either reflects or deviates from content
• the claim that a given author's work effectively improves or worsens existing social conditions in a particular time period
• an argument that one author's engagement with a given issue proves more successful than another author's
• a close look at the historical or biographical conditions informing particular works
• the tracking of a particular motif, symbol, metaphor or other device across a work, paired with a specific argument concerning its significance
• the argument that an author's works prove inconsistent when certain important elements of those works are compared

Sample Paper #1

Sample Paper #2

Sample Paper #3

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu