English 582R
Dr. Morillo
Pope and Swift
Final Paper/Project Proposal
Due Wednesday, April 11, in class
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.
Option One, Discursive Essay
Your proposal will articulate a research question of
interest to you about any work(s) by Swift or Pope, or comparison of
those two authors. It will need to formulate a question small enough to
be answered in a seminar paper of 12-15 pages.
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 of at
least 10 items drawing
on relevant published scholarly works from the resource resources on
the syllabus or works
of your own selection.
Option Two, Topical Teaching Edition
of Swift or Pope's Poetry
Most collections of poetry by our authors fall between the rock of
trying to be representative of their whole careers, and the hard place
of trying to be accommodate today's undergraduate student habits,
interests, and tastes. The former collections are often impossibly long
and merely additive in their principle of selection, the latter often
likely to offer the same old chestnuts a la Norton, or may be
limited to topics too tendentious or narrow to last well.
Propose an alternative collection, to be either in print or web form,
in which you select poems that best present one particular topic of
significance that you believe is critical to understand and appreciate
one of these poets and what makes him still worth reading. In the
proposal define the topic and what makes it interesting and useful for
teaching the poem to undergraduates and list the poems you will select
to present it. For example, topics might be Swift and charity, or
Pope and money. For Swift draw from the complete Gutenberg etexts vols.
I-II, for Pope from you Twickenham edition. Any length work from any
part of their careers is fair game. Number of poems is up to you but
should be guided by what would help others to teach your topic best.