Critical Response Essay

As you know, the due date for your critical response essay is fast approaching. What follows here are the requirements for the essay and some of your options. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Assignment Sheet

Due: Tuesday, 3/7/00, at the start of class. It is your responsibility to complete your papers on time in the proper format; late papers will be accepted, but they will lose one-third of a grade for every day they are late and I will not provide comments on them.

Format: 4-6 pages (roughly 800-1800 words), with a title and a heading that includes the course number or title, your name, and the date; word-processed; double-spaced; font Times 12 point or similar; preferably laser-printed. [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.]

Assignment Options: You have multiple options for your first critical response paper:

• Develop a topic of your own choice (with my approval).
• Analyze a passage from a literary work that we've read thus far in the semester and relate it to a larger pattern or issue in that text or in other assigned readings to date.
• Analyze a passage from a critical, historical, or theoretical work that we've read thus far in the semester and relate it to one or more of the assigned literary texts to date
• Make an argument for the most appropriate literary, historical, or political-economic context in which to understand a given literary text that we've read thus far in the semester.

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as those who 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.

Rewrite Policy: I will accept rewrites of the critical response essay, so long as you get them to me within two weeks of receiving comments on your previous draft from me. Those who get their rewrites in on time can have their original grade replaced by the new grade.

EN 514: Comparative Approaches to Literature, Spring 2000
Created: 3/1/00, 3:26 pm
Last modified: 3/1/00, 3:26 pm