English 201: Paper Assignment
Due: Friday, December 4

Literary analysis: Select a short work (or a small, yet significant section of a work) from our syllabus. Your paper will be a literary analysis of the work you’ve chosen. This means that you will develop a reading of your text’s major issues (themes, expressed goals, etc.), a reading you will support through close attention to the text’s literary features (imagery, rhetorical devices, meter/rhyme scheme, manipulation of generic conventions, etc.).

** If you choose to analyze a section of a longer work, you should limit your section to whatever length will allow you to exhaust its critical possibilities within the 4-5 pages at your disposal.

Thesis: Your paper should have a definite thesis (argument) about the piece of literature you have chosen. Plan your paper carefully to be sure that it is coherently organized, that paragraphs have clear topic statements and are developed fully. Also be sure that your conclusion does more than summarize your paper -- you should be able to "conclude" something about your text after you have analyzed it so closely.

Citations (How to avoid plagiarism): This assignment does not ask you to do any reading beyond the materials in the Norton Anthology and the handouts I’ve distributed. If you do consult other sources, be sure that you acknowledge any ideas you borrow from others. Put quotation marks around any exact phrases that you borrow. In all cases where you owe an academic debt to someone else’s work, you must provide a complete citation (in an endnote, preferably) of the source of these borrowings -- of ideas or language.

Quotations: When you quote from your text, be sure to include a proper citation in parentheses at the end of the sentence in which the quotation occurs -- or at the end of the quoted passage/stanza/ dialogue if you arrange it as an inset quote. (This citation should consist of a line reference for poetry; an act, scene, and line reference for drama; a page reference for prose.) All quotations exceeding 4 lines of text should be printed as inset quotes: begin the quote on a new line; indent all lines of the quotation 10 spaces from left margin; continue all lines to the normal right margin.

Format: Your paper should be 4-5 typed, double spaced pages in length when printed in a reasonable (readable!) 10- or 12- point typeface. Do not exceed the prescribed length by much, but also, do not be satisfied with a paper of less than 4 full pages.

Number the pages of your paper. Do not include a title page -- place your name in the upper right-hand corner of the first page and center your title near the top of the page. Fasten your paper together with a staple. (No plastic folders, please!)