MLA Format + Works Cited page

1200-1500 Words

4-5 Secondary Research Sources in addition to the Primary Text of your choice

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Select any author and one representative text from the remaining time periods: New Nation, the Romantic Era, or 19th C Reform.

Your essay should create an argument based on the following:

Choose one of the following modes of criticism:

Historical – research the history behind the story to create an argument

Biographical – research the life of the author to create an argument

Cultural – correlate the main idea of the story to a cultural problem, either past or present

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It is critical that you use the library resource JSTOR and use at least one secondary source from it. The source from JSTOR will contain a focused argument that you may note blends the above forms (or perhaps uses another mode such as psychological). That being said, you may use any ‘mode.’ These are just ways to visualize crafting the argument. Your argument should be primarily in response to one or more JSTOR sources and the primary text. Use additional sources including video and webs ources as needed.

Create an argumentative essay, with a thesis statement, that makes an argument based on one of the above modes of criticism.

Your essay should quote/paraphrase both the primary text and your secondary sources in the body as support for each body paragraph (i.e. each body paragraph should contain some evidence).

These lit courses move very fast and are ‘fly-over’ views of the literary periods.  designing the class.

For the textbook, make sure you open the left sidebar to see the contents list and the last two time periods concerning the research paper: https://viva.pressbooks.pub/amlit1/front-matter/introduction/

For the research paper, you will need to follow my author, text, the world, and you approach.

I will give some personal recommendations:

Romanticism

Ralph Waldo Emerson – I love Emerson. He is (arguably) the leader of the Transcendentalist movement, a group of writers in the 19th C who sought the sublime in nature.

Thoreau – Another Transcendentalist who wrote the famed Walden Pond. If you are the type of person who would like to live off the land in the wild, chose Henry.

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Hawthorne – Hawthorne is an earlier Romantic than the above, but I consider his prose to be among the most beautiful in history, personally. The Scarlet Letter is also a daring instance of Feminism and questioning of Religious hypocrisy at a time when it was very dangerous to do so.

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Poe – Do you like spooky stuff and horror?  Writers totally engorged in drug addiction and misery?  Poe is your guy.

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EMILY DICKINSON – I shout this out loud because personally, I feel she is the greatest poet of all time, but that is just my opinion.

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Those are my primary recommendations for your research topic.