THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIODepartment of EnglishSummer 2000ENGLISH 200: READING CRITICISM READING LITERATUREEssay 2 |
| Due: Aug. 11 in class Length: 2500 words Value: 30% of your final grade Style Guide: MLA Handbook
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| Instructions: Write a coherent and logically developed essay on one of the following
topics. Remember: an essay is a rhetorical exercise, and thus you must include an
argumentative thesis supported by evidence that seeks to persuade your reader.
Familiarize yourself with the details of the MLA style, and make sure you include a
Works Cited page that lists your primary texts, as well as all the sources you draw upon
to mount your argument. The correct use of secondary research material is required.
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| Topics: 1. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has been read in many ways—in class, for example, we considered it from Bakhtinian and Marxist positions—but it is also a text that seems expressly concerned with artistic creation and biological creation, drawing attention to the gendering of these processes. Drawing on an explicitly feminist theoretical perspective, propose an alternative reading of this text. Clearly indicate what type of feminist theory or theories are informing your reading and justify your choice. 2. Krapp in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape assembles his subjectivity in a particular relationship with the technological apparatus of the tape recorder—but also with the banana. Is this one of those times when a cigar is just a cigar or not? Drawing upon Lacanian or Freudian psychoanalysis, propose a reading of Beckett's play. 3. Imagine a conversation between Edward Said or Homi Bhabha and T. S. Eliot on the nature and function of tradition and the canon. You may frame this encounter in terms of a fictional conversation if you wish, but in any case you must clearly draw upon ideas they have expressed in their texts. If you do present this encounter as a conversation, you may want to begin your paper with a concise introduction and summary of their positions. 4. Edgar Allen Poe's The Purloined Letter as a detective story suggests many parallels between the interpretive work of the detective and that of the literary critic. Following the ideas of Bakhtin, investigate the different discourses that circulate in this text. 5. Georg Lukács and Susan Sontag both have a lot to say about modernist art—how might each of them characterize Kafka's Cares of a Family Man? Which reading—if either—would you support and why? If you disagree with them, propose a reading of your own. 6. Propose a topic of your own that deals with at least two of the theorists we have covered. You must present it for my approval by Aug. 3 at the latest.
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