Professor Suzanne Keyworth

Research project

LIT 2020

 

NO LESS THAN FOUR OUTSIDE SOURCES

 

Select an author/story from your text.  All stories are available to you, but you will need to check to make sure there is something written about your author.  Some of the authors are so new that they do not have any critical essays written about their work yet. 

 

Once you have selected the author/story, research both the author and the author’s works.  You may or may not be able to find information on your particular story.  Even so, you should be able to find information on the author in general.

 

Write a six to eight page documented paper on the main theme of this story.  Be sure and use your own opinions and back them up with source material.  The following are suggestions:

 

  1. Does the story make a general statement about life or experience?  A quick summary of any theme is less than a complete understanding of the story from which it comes.
  2. Is the thematic statement accomplished chiefly by the outcome of the action?  What qualifications and shadings are given to it by the awareness of the characters of what has happened to them?
  3. What values and ideas have been put into conflict from which the thematic statement comes?
  4. Is the theme a traditional one?  Has the story given a new twist to traditional wisdom?  Where else—in literature, history or religion—have you encountered a similar theme?  Can you recall a poem or story that makes a comparable thematic statement?

                                                               (refer to text)

                                                

 

Literary Evaluation:  Reading and Writing Strategies

 

  1. Ethical interpretation locates the center of meaning in the moral or ethical dimensions of a literary text, as represented in the personal interactions among characters.
  2. Civic interpretation explores literature for themes of moral values that have significance for individuals as members of communities.
  3. Cultural interpretation examines situations and contexts that give birth to a literary work.  This approach may focus on the life of the author, the context (social, economic, and political) of the time the work was written, and various cultural representations contained within the work.
  4. Feminist interpretation looks at how patriarchal structures are reflected in literature and analyzes how structures based on dominance and submission effect economic situations, psychological and physical status, and interpersonal relationships.
  5. Psychological interpretation analyzes literary representations of mind constructions such as the id, ego, and superego, as well as the ways in which literary language represents characters’ psychological profiles.

 

Sipiora, Phillip.  Reading and Writing About Literature.  Upper Saddle River:  Prentice-Hall, 2002.  vii-viii.