English 562
Dr.Morillo
Eighteenth-Century Literature
Final Paper
Assignment
Due Wednesday, April 29 printed
out on paper, in the folder on
my office door, at noon.
12-15 pages, double-spaced typed/printed
text.Standard margins (top &
bottom 1" margins; right and left 1.25" margins).
If
you have any other format questions, ask me.
You will chose one of 3 options. Each option requires a brief proposal
in which you formulate a preliminary question or thesis.
The proposal will be 2-3
pages,
double-spaced
typed/printed text. Standard margins (top & bottom 1" margins;
right and
left 1.25" margins). If you have any other format questions, ask me.
Options 1 and 2:
Your proposal should state a specific claim or raise a specific
question about what you have found interesting in the array of primary
texts. Even though you've been provided the general topic to
investigate, you still need to refine your specific plan for what you
aim to argue in a paper of 12-15 pages. Your bibliography will include
chosen primary texts and any additional secondary texts found useful.
Option 3:
Your
proposal should articulate a research question about
eighteenth-century literature, having something to do with genre, and
of particular nterest to you,
workable in a paper of 12-15 pages. You should choose a
topic that engages with some issue(s) relevant to the study of this
literary-historical period. In one or two pages pose a
question, explain
why you find it interesting, and propose a preliminary hypothesis about
it. Each proposal will end in a preliminary bibliography drawing
on relevant works from the resource resources on the syllabus or works
of your own selection.
The last page of your proposal will be your preliminary bibliography.
Works will be listed alphabetically and in proper MLA format for
a Works Cited page. Please refer to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers to learn how to cite works correctly in a bibliography.
Option one: Primary Textual
& Historical Research on prose, tales, and tubs
The new availability online of full-text primary texts from the 17th
and 18th centuries, books once limited to the dusty shelves of select
archives, makes it far more possible now for graduate students to get a
taste of doing some archival, primary work. Here is your task:
Imagine you are out to convince an
editor of a new critical edition of Swift's Tale whether it is important to
discuss any or all of these texts as relevant to the cultural and
literary contexts of Swift's Tale of
a Tub:
Trepidantium
malleus intrepidanter malleatus, or, The west-country wise-akers
crack-brain'd reprimand (to a late book called Mr. Keith no
Presbyterian, nor Quaker, but George the apostate) [electronic
resource] : hammered about his own numscul being a joco-satyrical
return to a late tale of a tub emitted by a reverend non-con at prsent
residing not far from Bedlam
Author: W. C.
Published: 1696.
Format: eBook
Online: View
resource online
A
tale in a tub, or, A tub lecture [electronic resource] : as it was
delivered by Mi-Heele Mendsoale, an inspired Brownist and a most
upright translator in a meeting house neere Bedlam, the one and
twentieth of December last, 1641
Author: Taylor, John, 1580-1653.
Published: 1642.
Format: eBook
Online: View
resource online
A
full and compleat answer against the writer of a late volume set forth
[electronic resource] : entituled A tale in a tub, or, A tub lecture :
with a vindication of that ridiculous name called roundheads : together
with some excellent verses on the defacing of Cheapside crosse : also
proving that it is far better to preach in a boat than in a tub
Author: Taylor, John, 1580-1653.
Published: 1642.
Format: eBook
Online: View
resource online
A
tale in a tub, or, A tub lecture [electronic resource] : as it was
delivered by my-heele Mendsoale and inspired Brownist and a most
upright translator : in a meeting house neere Bedlam the one and
twentieth of December, last 1641
Author: Taylor, John, 1580-1653.
Published: 1641.
Format: eBook
Online: View
resource online
All of these texts are archived in Early English Books Online
(EEBO), one of many databases that have made it much easier for
graduate students to get a taste of primary textual/historical research.
Your task:
Read each text online EEBO. Just as with reading Swift, you must sort
out whether
the text is straight or satiric, authoritative or crackpot, and if
there's any history you need to know to interpret them well. Then
construct an argument about whether these texts are relevant to
understanding Swift's more famous Tub,
and if they are, why they are. Be cautious about single-source claims
of influence. You are likely dealing in probabilities, not certainties.
You may wish to consider how to address the probability of whether
Swfit knew these
texts from the 1640s or not, how he would have had access to them, and
what he would have thought of them.
If you need biographical information about people, go to the Dictionary of National Biography
for all Britons, and to the Dictionary
of Literary Biography vols. (neither is online, alas) for
writers of more canonized literature.
Option Two: Primary Textual
Research on poetry, the 18th-c Pindaric Ode
Using your close-reading skills and knowledge of a poetic genere
create an argument about the importance of any or all of these archived
poems, most anonymous, to understanding the 18th-century Pindaric ode:
A Pindarick Ode Humbly Offered to
the
Queen (1706) William Congreve
Apotheosis Basilike, or a Pindarick
Ode (1701)
Reynardson, Francis An
Ode to the
Pretender (1713)
A Pindarick Upon the Death of Her Late
Majesty (1714)
The Bostonian Prophet: An
Heroi-Comico-Serious-Parodical Pindaric (1769)
Option Three. Choose,
propose and pursue your own research topic. 12-15 pages including Works Cited
Research Paper 12-15 pages.
Develop your proposal idea into a paper. Although 12-15 pages might
seem long, it in fact is only enough to make a limited number of claims
backed by sufficient evidence, and it is about half the length of the
manuscript of a typical published essay.
Give yourself enough time revise and redraft ideas, and to proof your
work with your eyes and brain, not just your spellchecker. As the key
work in a professional program your papers are the main evidence for
your professional skills, so show that you care about your work. The
clearest mark of academic written work that is becoming professional is
a correct and accurate bibliography and use of citation (MLA for this
paper).
It is highly unlikely that your idea will be so blazingly original that
nothing else is published on or close to it. Aim instead to complement
and perhaps challenge the current state of knowledge by being informed
enough by the thoughts of others while developing a sense of your own
voice and style and its place in ongoing collective debates about
historical texts and contexts.
If you wish to venture beyond the syllabus, here are some other works
and genres that may be of interest:
Essays, Periodical and Occasional
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele: Tatler,
Spectator; Eliza Haywood Female
Spectator; Samuel Johnson Rambler,
Henry MacKenzie The Lounger;
David Hume
Essays Moral and Political;
Jane Collier Essay on Art of
Ingeniously Tormenting
Literary
Criticism: John Dennis, Advancement
and Reformation of Modern Poetry; Pope Essay on
Criticism; Pope Preface to Iliad;
Addison on Milton (select Spectators); Johnson Preface to
Shakespeare
Epic:
Pope, Iliad; Cowper, Iliad; Pope, Fenton, Broome: Odyssey; Dryden, Aneid
Mock
Epic Dryden MacFlecknoe,
Pope Dunciad (1728, 1742)
Pastoral:
Pope Pastorals; Ambrose
Philips, Pastorals
Mock Pastoral
John Gay Birth of the Squire,
Shepherd's Week, Mary Montagu,
Town Eclogues
Mock
Ode Cowper Secundem Artem
Georgic
Pope, Windsor Forest, John
Denham, Cooper's Hill
Mock/anti/Georgic:
Gay Trivia; Swift Description of a City Shower;
Stephen Duck Thresher's Labour;
Mary Collier
Woman's Labour
MockElegy
Gray, Ode on the Death of a
Favourite Cat, Swift, Satirical
Elegy on Late General, Thomas Parnell, To an Old Beauty
Philosophical
Poem: Pope, Essay on Man;
James Thompson, Winter/The Seasons,
Mark Akenside Pleasures of
Imagination, Henry Brooke Universal
Beauty; Cowper The Task
Sonnet:
Gray Sonnet on the Death of West;
Charlotte Smith Elegiac Sonnets
Literary Forgery: James MacPherson,
Fingal; Thomas Chatteron Poems by Rowley
Social
Protest: Mary Astell, Serious
Proposal to the Ladies, Mary Leapor Epistle to a Lady, Man
the Monarch; Oliver Goldsmith Deserted
Village; George Crabbe, The
Village
Biography:
Johnson, Lives of the Poets;
Boswell, Life of Johnson
Further questions? email me morillo@unity.ncsu.edu
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562 Syllabus