Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

Final Paper and Presentation Guidelines

Final Paper

We are at a remarkable point in literature where exciting new technologies, genres, cultures and languages along with their sets of conventions, aesthetics, tools and audiences, open up our field of literary studies, like at other defining moments and crossroads in the history of English, to reassessment and invention. For the final paper, as you reexamine texts in the course, think about how shifts and changes throughout literary history and now might demand responsive adjustments and innovation on the part of reading and analyzing texts. How could we look at literature? What new tools do we have to study them? How do we write about them to share our findings with others?

Consider the wide range of sources that have informed our reading this semester. In addition to solid foundational close reading skills developed since last semester, our understanding and interpretation of literary texts have benefited from diverse sources external to the literature itself ranging from other literature to biographies, dictionaries of etymology, idioms, Yiddish and symbols to documentaries, films, interviews, letters, journals, live readings and performances, concordances, manuscripts, maps, and more.

When you read Milton's Sonnet 19 with the benefit of knowing from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that in his time "fondly" meant "foolishly" or when you learn from Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice that Lewis Carroll explains the meaning of "jabberwock" to a class of students thus: "the Anglo-Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'offspring' or 'fruit.' Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble discussion,' this would give the meaning of 'the result of much excited discussion'" (153), your perception of the meaning of both works changes. Perhaps the revealed self-awareness and self-referentiality that show Milton's play and Carroll's joke on poetry and its study add new layers to your reading and increase your appreciation of these texts.

Your packet contains many close readings of and critical texts on literature from Gardner’s “Jabberwocky” notes and Baxter’s essays to Weales’s Death of a Salesman introduction and Mielziner’s set design accounts. Studying them can help you think about different ways of analyzing and writing about literature, how to make a point, how to incorporate evidence into your argument, and how to illustrate and develop ideas.

Consider the means, methods and structures of texts and these other sources and how they might influence the shape, style and argument of your writing. Expand from your reading responses and extend class discussion.

Write a 3–5-page paper (MLA style citation and formatting) on one of the topics below or on one of your own choosing. Keep in mind that these are suggestions for analysis. In working on your paper, you will eventually formulate an argument or thesis that is the result of your research and examination of the texts to develop in response to these prompts.

• Analyze the form and medium/media of one or more texts. How do formal qualities affect a text? Why does it matter that a literary work is prose or poetry, that it is long or short, that the lines are regular or irregular, that it rhymes, or is fragmented, or repetitive? To what extent does the work follow the conventions of its form? What narrative or poetic form(s) does the author choose or invent? What about that form enables the text the range of expression that it has? On the other hand, what problems does the medium pose on the literary product? In what ways does technology shape medium? How does changing technology and medium influence audience taste and expectations? If a text has many different forms or many different versions, how does one “read” it or reconcile its meanings? You might also consider whether this textual instability is desirable or not. Are unsettled texts useful, appropriate for their contents, or informative in any way? Texts to look at include the nursery rhymes, “Need,” “A Poison Tree,” “I Hear America Singing,” and Death of a Salesman.
• Discuss music and musicality in one or more works, such as in the nursery rhymes, “Jabberwocky,” “Anne Hathaway,” The Book of Memory, “I Hear America Singing,” The Philadelphia, and “We Real Cool.” How does music figure in the work(s)? What constitutes musicality? What role does music play? What aspects of the text are musical? What inspires the music in the text? How is musicality achieved? Why is it important in the work? In what ways does the text challenge concepts of what is musical or not? What or who makes music? Can a novel be musical? Can a non-musical play be musical?
• Examine time and timing in one or more works, such as in Sonnet 19, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” The Book of Memory, “Because I could not stop for Death—,” The Philadelphia, and Death of a Salesman. How does the author use time in the work? Why is timing important? What moments in the work find characters struggling against time, making use of time, or affected by time? Why do several characters correct themselves, sometimes repeatedly? What is the relationship between time, timing and revisions? Is time a backdrop, a nemesis, a friend, a master, a slave, or an illusion? Is time orderly, logical, consistent or unpredictable?
• How do we know? Explore one or more works on the issue of knowledge, learning, and what it means to know. Consider, for example, Sonnet 19, The Merchant of Venice, The Book of Memory, “Defender of the Faith,” The Philadelphia, “Priscilla the Cambodian,” and Death of a Salesman. What limits knowledge? What changes knowledge? How does one learn? Is “guts” a kind of knowledge? What can it tell us? Contrast different kinds of knowledge within a work or between works. How are feelings, experience and reading different in terms of how one knows? Also, is there a difference between to know and to understand? Is knowledge power? Is knowledge equal?
• Focus on a word, phrase or section in each of the three nursery rhymes that seem baffling, out of place or shocking. Consider historical, political, cultural, linguistic or other explanations for that problem point. Compare these academic explanations to various in-book illustrations of the rhymes. How does each kind of illumination resolve or further the disruption? Do the explanations and illustrations evade or gloss over the troubling issue or do they address it head on? How do the illustrators explain the puzzle compared to the editors and writers? How well do the illustrations fit or describe the text compared to the academic clarification? Are the Mother Goose tales nonsense or sense after all?

The paper is due on Thursday, May 3, 2018. You can submit a paper copy to me in class, in my box at the end of the hall past my office (BRK 1106) or attach it to an e-mail to me before midnight.

Revision

• Does my title show that I have a point to make?

• Is my thesis sound, clear, and interesting?

• Have I supported my thesis with compelling evidence?

• Is the organization of my paper logical and appropriate to the arguments I am making?

• Is my language clear, consistent, and suited to the subject matter?

• Do each of my paragraphs have a clear point and coherence?

• Have I incorporated quotations smoothly into my own prose?
• Do I provide balanced analysis of the quotes I cite?

• Are my sentences varied, interesting, and effective?

• Do my verbs agree with their subjects? Pronouns with their nouns?

• Is my paper free of spelling mistakes?

• Have I cited my sources properly and formatted my paper using MLA style?

Final Presentation

Presentation of your final paper is in week 17 of class: Monday, April 30 and Thursday, May 3, 2018. Each panel of three or four papers will have fifteen minutes to present their study of texts we have read in this course. This will be followed by a ten-minute question and answer session. A moderator will be presiding over the presentations and discussion session of each panel, introducing the speakers, mediating the questions and responses, and making sure things stay on schedule.

Practice reading your presentation aloud, with visual aid if you have any, and edit for speakability, clarity, and time.

Respondents give constructive comments on the panelists' talk, indicating illuminating and effective points made, pointing out problems to fix ex. content, logic, substantiation, organization, clarification, delivery, and giving further commentary and opinions on the issues being discussed. Respondents assigned to a panel are responsible for giving feedback to any and all of the speakers on that panel but are free to comment on papers of other panels as well.

 
You will be graded both for your performance in giving your talk and in responding to your classmates' presentations, how you present your own ideas and how you show that you know how to listen to, think about, and discuss ideas that others propose.

A program of the final presentation schedule will be posted on our detailed schedule page once panel and paper titles, speakers and moderators are finalized. You are responsible for e-mailing me any revisions to your presentation title by Friday, April 27, 2018.

Please inform me of any special equipment needs, otherwise our in-class computer (which uses Microsoft Office 2007) and LCD projector is provided.

Links

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Last updated May 3, 2018