Formal Writing Assignments

Essays are due on the dates listed below and must follow MLA formatting standards (see attached Style Guide below or visit the Modern Language Association or Purdue Online Writing Lab for comprehensive guidelines).  Use the MLA and/or Purdue sites for help with Works Cited and Footnotes as well.  If looking for an easy way to always do consistent Works Cited citations, try out Zotero (an online Web site and downloadable app). Essays should be between 2000-3000 words in length (roughly 5 to 8 pages, excluding title or works cited pages) and on the literature assigned in the units.  This means that the writing needs to be relatively concise, yet well-supported.

The essays are to be pointed and specific analyses of a main text (or two), looking at the text's/author's use of language, genre, character, style, etc.  Note, for instance, the ways in which the books develop theme through character, action, symbolism, etc.  Essays could, beyond theme, look at what the characters themselves reveal about society and its effects on the individual and about you as a person; they could look at the conflicts and what they reveal; they could study the setting and its symbolism or impact on character and action or look at narrative structure and how it reveals or conceals, how it develops linearly or episodically.  One effective way to generate an argument, start an introduction, or craft a structure is to read what other critics have written about your selected book of interest and to respond by building on a neglected point or by taking up a contrary stance.  You can read these by going to a library and searching critical guides or by doing a scholar.google.com search for your title of interest and a focal idea (or simply adding  "criticism").  You can also build another book (either a main text or an independent reading selection) into your essay, doing a comparison/contrast of sorts.  Note, however, that this requires both a specific and meaningful similarity between the texts and an equally specific and meaningful contrast that such comparisons yield.  Merely focusing on similarities can lead to a shallow and repetitive essay, but it is possible to argue that two books are largely developing similar arguments.  (Note that if you spend equal energy on an independent reading selection in your essay, it earns you credit for the independent reading assignment, and no other project is required for that book.)

The Annotated Bibliography should have a minimum of four entries and 1000-word-count limit (excluding the bibliographic entries themselves). This assignment will be introduced in greater detail at the start of the spring semester.

The dates and requirements for the essays are as follows:

Fall Semester

  Essay 1 (on a main work from the summer or Units 1-3), Nov. 14, 2025—works cited page but no title page

  Spring Semester

  Annotated Bibliography (for 1-3 main works from Units 1-6, not including the focal text(s) in Essay 1), March 23, 2026

  Essay 2 (on a main work other than that of Essay 1), May 4, 2026—title page & footnotes & bibliography page

It is important to realize that the writing process actually begins with the reading and lectures for the books; therefore, you should be thinking about the themes of the units from page one of each book.  Ask questions as you read, separate the simple from the complex, and allow these complex questions to develop into an argument about the reading.

Below is my style guide to formatting (I), grammar (II), and structure (III) (section III is to be taken with a grain of salt—it is only a basic recipe for a basic essay).  Also, included below are the Rubric and guides to Works Cited and Footnotes (each of which will be distributed and discussed in class). along with more in-depth readings on the purpose of criticism and literary lenses by which literature can be read and analyzed.