SUNY Fredonia
College of Arts and Humanities
ENGL 209: Novels and Tales
Powers of Narrative
Spring 2010
Sections 11 and 12: TTh 2-3:20, Fenton 166
Office: Fenton 265; MF 9-11, 3-5, TTh 9:30-12, and by appointment; 673-3856
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu, brucesimon18@yahoo.com
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
ANGEL Space: https://fredonia.sln.suny.edu/default.asp

Critical Essay, Spring 2010

This page takes on two important questions about the critical essay you will write this semester in this course: what and what for; it also includes links to the specific assignment sheet for each set of options. My goal is to make this page as useful to you as possible, so let me know if it can be improved. If anything is badly worded, unclear, or missing, please contact me with constructive criticisms and suggestions. Ditto for any questions you may have about any of the options listed on the assignments sheets. Thanks.

What

As you know, you are required to submit a critical essay, which is typically an analysis of the narrative strategies of a particular writer and work from the course. Your critical essay is to be a thesis-driven, analytical, and persuasive four-to-six-page paper. It should not be simply a personal response to what you have read, or simply a statement of your opinions or assertion of your views, but should instead be organized to convince your readers to accept an argument you have developed in response to a specific question. In short, you are being asked to generate an original, creative argument that supports your own perspective on the text or texts you've chosen to write on and is persuasive to your intended audience(s). You will have the opportunity to submit an essay from one or both of the first two units of the course; if you submit two essays, I will count the higher of the two grades toward your final grade and give you extra credit in the preparation/participation portion of your final grade for the other.

What For

Over the course of the semester so far you've already done a good deal of informal writing--ranging from the free writing on specific topics in class to your online participation and, for some of you, the response essay. You'll have begun getting practiced at noticing things about literary texts and asking questions of them; we'll have begun focusing a lot in class on making connections between texts and identifying tensions within and between them, interpreting significant passages and image patterns, and considering various answers to questions that you all have posed as well as I. What this assignment gives you the chance to do is develop a sustained argument on a specific topic. The critical essay allows you to focus in on a particular topic or question that most interests you (this involves reviewing your notes and memories of the readings, as well as listserv contributions), to delve more deeply into specific readings (this involves choosing the readings that best allow you to address the topic or question you have chosen and focusing on those parts that seem most relevant to the topic), and to develop and support an argument about the relation between the readings and the topic or question (this involves both critically analyzing the texts you have chosen to focus on and crafting a valid, persuasive argument). Doing these things will not only improve your skills in active, critical reading and analytical, persuasive writing, but it will also prepare you for the final project.

The other major purpose of the critical essay is for me to indicate clearly what I see as the major questions or issues raised by each of the units in the course. Each should provide you with something of a framework for understanding and reviewing the unit as a whole. Hence, I strongly recommend that you consider carefully each of the options given before settling on one on which to focus your critical essay. It's easy to miss the forest for the trees, especially when there were so many different "trees" we were analyzing each day, so seeing the range of questions I think are most important to consider when looking back on the unit can give you a new, better perspective on what we've read, as well as lay out possible directions for the final research project.

Assignment Sheet: The Cinderella Scenario

Due: The deadline for submitting a critical essay for this unit to the CE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space is 11:30 pm Monday, 29 March 2010. Late papers will not be accepted or graded, unless you seek an extension by class time on Thursday, 25 March.

Format: 4-6 pages (roughly 1000-1800 words), double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); the basic template is Author. Book Title. City of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication.); proper MLA format for quotations within a paragraph: "quotation" (12); and blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer. See Appendix 4 in The Story and Its Writer for other useful formatting advice (SIW 1768-1797). [Please be aware that you'll get a better grade if you first develop your ideas fully, without feeling that you have to stop at a certain page or word limit, and then go back and condense, cut, and otherwise revise so as to be as concise, clear, and persuasive as possible. Don't let the page limit limit your exploration of ideas.]

Criteria for Evaluation: Your grade for the critical essay will be determined by the coherence and validity of the paper's arguments, the effectiveness of the paper's structure in conveying your ideas and convincing your audience, and the quality of the paper's prose (including diction, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and formatting).

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as those who have taken and are taking this class; hence, you can assume that your readers have read the texts you're writing on and you don't have to include the kind of background that someone not taking this course would need.

Draft Policy: I would be happy to offer brief comments on your drafts, so long as you get me them soon after Spring Break.

Rewrite Policy: I will not grade rewrites of the critical essay, although I will give comments on any rewrite(s) you choose to do (which will improve your preparation/participation grade and better prepare you for the next critical essay).

Assignment Options: You have multiple options for the critical essay for this unit; you do not have the option of inventing your own topic for this assignment, but must instead choose one (1) of the following options. Extra research is not required for any of the critical options, although it is permissible, so long as the central argument you are making is your own and the evidence you draw on to support it--including, of course, relevant and important passages from the text(s) you are analyzing--supports the goals of your essay.

• Option #1: Our anthology The Classic Fairy Tales seems shadowed or haunted by one particular figure: Walt Disney. In "Breaking the Disney Spell," Jack Zipes portrays Disney as a kind of "nefarious wizard" who "employed animators and technology to [encourage viewers to] stop thinking about change, to return to his films, and to long nostalgically for neatly-ordered patriarchal realms" (333, 352). Donald Haase concurs in "Yours, Mine, or Ours?," calling Disney the "creator of the fairy tale as consumer romance" (354). Your job in this option is to assess the cultural and gender politics of Disney's appropriation of a classic fairy tale. You may either (a) analyze Disney's movie Cinderella in relation to versions of "Cinderella" we have read (or Little Red Riding Hood in a similar way, if you can get a hold of this older and less well-known Disney film), and in so doing respond to arguments like Zipes's and Haase's; or (b) analyze a Disney movie from 1990 to the present that engages a fairy tale or fairy tale motif in relation to arguments about revisions to fairy tales that we have read, and in so doing respond to Zipes's claim that Disney movies haven't deviated significantly from his original formula. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the politics of fairy tales using examples drawn from a Disney movie and from "The Cinderella Scenario."

• Option #2: Many stories in this first unit of the course revise and reflect on a classic fairy tale. Your job in this option is to choose any two "re-visionary" fictions from our readings thus far and craft an argument that addresses the significance and stakes of the similarities and differences between your two writers' goals and strategies for reflecting on either "Cinderella" or "Little Red Riding Hood." Try to speculate convincingly about the later author's intentions for revising either "Cinderella" or "Little Red Riding Hood," based on the similarities and differences you note between the later writer's text and the earlier fairy tale. When considering how to generate and support a central argument, first try finding particular passages from the later work that allude to the fairy tale in question or parallel situations, themes, narrative strategies, or imagery between the fairy tale and story/poem, and then try figuring out why the later writer did these things and what's at stake in them. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the re-vision of fairy tales using examples drawn from the "The Cinderella Scenario."

• Option #3: Many stories in this first unit in the course make use of the fairy tale's conventions without revising a specific tale. Your job in this option is to choose one such story from our readings thus far and craft an argument that addresses the significance and stakes of the writer's use of fairy tale conventions. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the use of fairy tale conventions via an example from the "The Cinderella Scenario."

• Option #4: Many essays in this first unit of the course use or propose specific methodologies for analyzing fairy tales. Your job in this option is to craft an argument aimed at convincing your readers that one particular methodology (either one already used or proposed in the readings or one of your own, which may combine elements from various critical approaches we've encountered in the course) is better than others at analyzing fairy tales. You should make your case using both theoretical arguments and practical examples--by considering the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies in the abstract and by applying them to one or more fairy tales we've read this semester. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the analysis of fairy tales using examples drawn from "The Cinderella Scenario."

Rationale: The critical essay is your chance to practice developing a critical argument that stems from your response to the assigned texts and our class discussions of them. Treat it as an opportunity to move beyond what we do on the listserv--making observations, asking questions--in class discussions--developing hypotheses, opinions, and possible answers to key questions--and in the response essay--exploring our own reactions to intersections between life and literature--by trying to support a hypothesis, convince someone else to accept your opinion, or persuade your audience that your answer is not only possible but is also highly plausible. The critical essay is a place to pursue some of the key issues of the course in more depth, at greater length, and with more textual support than we are typically able to do in an 80-minute class period.

Assignment Sheet: The Scheherazade Situation

Due: The deadline for submitting a critical essay for this unit to the CE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space is 11:30 pm Monday, 26 April 2010. Late papers will not be accepted or graded, unless you seek an extension by class time on Thursday, 22 April. All other requirements are the same as for the first critical essay.

Assignment Options: You have multiple options for the critical essay for this unit: if you did the first critical essay, you may invent your own topic for this assignment, so long as you run it by me by 22 April; everyone else (including those who don't choose to invent their own topic) must choose one (1) of the following options. Extra research is not required for any of the critical options, although it is permissible, so long as the central argument you are making is your own and the evidence you draw on to support it--including, of course, relevant and important passages from the text(s) you are analyzing--supports the goals of your essay.

• Option #1: What is the key purpose of storytelling? Use one of the following as your test case: The Arabian Nights, Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, or Grace's Potiki. Try to generalize based on the storytelling in the text you choose to focus on; do not limit your argument strictly to the ways stories work for the characters in or readers of that text. When considering how to generate and support a central argument, try finding particular passages that suggest what the purpose of storytelling is and/or using at least one specific story-within-a-story to support your claims. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the ends of storytelling using pertinent examples drawn from the "The Scheherazade Situation" unit.

• Option #2: What are the key powers of narrative? Use one of the following as your test case: The Arabian Nights, Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, or Grace's Potiki. Try to generalize based on the ways storytelling affects listeners/readers, for good and ill, in the text you choose to focus on; do not limit your argument strictly to the ways stories work for the characters in or readers of that text. When considering how to generate and support a central argument, try finding particular passages that suggest what the powers of narrative are and/or using at least one specific story-within-a-story to discuss how storytelling affects listeners or readers. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the effects of storytelling using pertinent examples drawn from the "The Scheherazade Situation" unit.

• Option #3: How, and to what ends, do contemporary writers revise The Arabian Nights in their fiction? Use one or two of the following as your test case: Poe's "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade, " Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and/or Grace's Potiki. Try to speculate convincingly about the later author's intentions for revising The Arabian Nights, based on the similarities and differences you note between the later writer's text and The Arabian Nights. When considering how to generate and support a central argument, first try finding particular passages from the later work that allude to The Arabian Nights, characters or names from The Arabian Nights, or parallel situations, themes, narrative strategies, or imagery, and then try figuring out why the later writer did these things. The point of this option is for you to back up some general claims about the re-vision of classic stories using examples drawn from the "The Scheherazade Situation" unit.

ENGL 209: Novels and Tales, Spring 2010
Created: 2/4/10 1:07 pm
Last modified: 4/8/10 6:28 pm
Webmaster: Bruce Simon, Associate Professor of English, SUNY Fredonia
Feel free to explore the Fall 2004, Fall 2003, and Fall 2002 versions of this course.