Research Essay

Your second major writing project will result in a piece of literary criticism that makes an argument about a text from this course and places your reading in conversation with other theoretical or critical sources. Literary critics are people inspired by the texts that they read to share their ideas with others. Literary criticism is thus at once a space in which writers develop and share analytic arguments about literary texts and a celebration of literature.

With this idea of literary celebration in mind, we might think of a good piece of literary criticism as one in which we not only get to appreciate an author’s argument but also get to take pleasure in their interest in the text—to listen to that author’s voice. For this essay, your task will thus involve saying something of interest as well as writing in a way that feels like your own, adding your voice to a critical conversation.

Since this project is a research essay, you will be required to select a focal text and also find secondary sources relevant to the focal text or to your interpretation of it. For your focal text, you may select any work that we have discussed or will have discussed from the following:

                  ​​​​​​​The Tempest

For your critical sources, you must engage with three critical secondary texts. I highly encourage you to pick one of your critical texts from those we have discussed (or will discuss) in class, if you find these arguments/topics relevant to your ideas about your focal text:

However, depending on your text, you may want to begin elsewhere. In developing your argument, you must respond in-depth to at least one of your sources.

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1. The first step of this writing project will involve writing me a letter detailing what idea you’d like to think critically about over the next two months. Relate which text you think you’d like to focus on, what questions it raises for you, and what issue, problem, or question you’d want to look further into as you research.

2. In P1 for this essay, you will try out a short draft (~750 words) dealing with your focal text. This first step is meant to give you space to develop your own ideas about the text—before you begin to engage with other critics. You might think of this short draft as a response, a close reading, an analysis, or an interpretation that communicates to your reader something specific that you find interesting in the text. You should work closely with the text and quote relevant passages.

2. You will then prepare an annotated bibliography (maximum two pages) that identifies four or five sources that may be helpful for your paper. Your sources should be cited using MLA-style in alphabetical order. Your annotations should consist in a brief paragraph summarizing the argument or focus of the source, as well as another brief paragraph describing how you would use the source in your paper (or why you wouldn’t).

3. For P2, you will write another short draft (~750 words) that relates one of your secondary sources to your interpretation of the focal text in P1. This source should be the one that is most important for your argument. You might use this draft to augment your own ideas, to contest a reading that contests your own, to apply a theoretical concept, or to otherwise complicate your original response.

4. Your first draft (RED1) will be an essay of at least 2000 words. You will build off of your work in the previous four steps to put forth an interpretation of your focal text that engages with theory and existing criticism.

5. After turning in your first draft, you will have a full three and a half weeks to revise your essay. During this time, you will be expected to revisit sources, to fine-tune and elaborate on your ideas, and to refine your prose—and you will work both with your peers in in-class review workshops and in conferences with me during RRR week. Your final essay (RED2) will be a polished piece of a literary criticism of about 2400 words.

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