Seminar Paper
As you know, the seminar paper must be a thesis-driven analytical or persuasive essay, roughly 12 to 18 pages in length, that stems from your prospectus/annotated bibliography. I will return comments on your prospectus within a week of receiving it that are aimed at helping you specify, develop, and focus your approach to your seminar paper.
In general, however, you should consider your final essay a place in which to work out your own approach to one or more of the comparative modes of literary and cultural analysis we've been exploring in this course. Consider the various approaches to comparative analysis we've been trying out: on the one hand, the many different ways in which we could compare two literary texts (either from the same time period or national tradition, or from different periods or traditions), whether by focusing on related or contrasting characters, themes, motifs, modes of characterization, narrative strategies, treatments of historical events, processes or legacies, central aesthetic, cultural, ethical or political concerns, or authorial projects; and, on the other hand, the many different ways in which we could compare a literary with a historical, critical, or theoretical text, whether by considering how and to what ends it departs from or transforms the historical record, how and to what ends it comments on a critical framework for understanding a national history or a literary tradition, or how and to what ends it intervenes on a theoretical controversy or debate. You might also consider what comparative approaches and modes of analysis and persuasion you have found most interesting and useful in the secondary and reserve readings, as well as the works you used for your annotated bibliography--they can provide fodder for your paper on many different levels: in terms of arguments to respond to, analytical approaches to learn from, or writing strategies to use (particularly in terms of ways of handling openings, transitions, and closings).
EN 514: Comparative Approaches to Literature, Spring 2000
Created: 4/11/00, 7:49 pm
Last modified: 4/11/00, 7:49 pm