This paper will be
on your choice of one of the first three novels, Oroonoko, Robinson
Crusoe, or Roxana.
Choose a brief passage or scene (no longer
than several paragraphs) that best captures any critical problem or
issue you consider especially relevant to interpreting the whole novel
in which the passage appears.
Consider the language of your chosen passage in as much detail
as
possible, and then write a brief essay explaining what problem or issue
is at stake, and how the particular details of language in the passage
work to make the passage significant and noteworthy. This will help you
to learn to read prose fiction with the close-reading care (and slow
pace) sometimes relegated to studies of lyric poetry. Pay particular
attention to the sentence-level detail of image, tone, syntax, diction
etc.
The assignment helps you practice your skills in close-reading, but you
may bring in other opinion as long as you footnote any sources and
explicate the passage sufficiently in your own terms, keeping other
opinions subordinate to your own. You do not, however, have to
consult any text beyond your chosen novel. Even though close-reading
skills grew out of the New Criticism,
you are not obliged to find their
ideals of harmony or unity in your reading. You may wish to work out a
passage that instead reveals some interesting disruption of structure,
complication of apparent theme or moral, or contradiction (logical,
ideological, etc.) between apparent authorial intent and textual
meaning as you understand it.