Guidelines for the Research Paper

THE RESEARCH ESSAY MUST BE ABOUT LITERATURE, FOLLOWING THE MAIN FOCUS OF ENGLISH 102. (Do not turn in old papers from English 101; do not turn in papers on topics of a social issues nature like “legalization of marijuana,” “cloning” or issues related to Covid-19. If you do so, the paper will automatically receive an F grade, and I will not read it past the first page.)

Method & Style

Your research essay (notice I did not say “report”) should be more informal rather than formal. For your “research essay,” what I mean by “research” is simply that I expect you to do some searching, reading and analyzing of secondary sources outside the realm of our course and textbooks.That does not mean you cannot use one or two sources from our textbook in your paper as well, but you should look for at least half of your sources outside the realm and materials of our course.In other words, you are going beyond the study of texts like the ones in our anthology and novel into the larger “world” of literary criticism (outside contexts and information which shed new light on your reading of a text or texts).You can choose whatever genre you would like to focus on for your research essay:poetry, fiction, or drama,

a novel, or other forms of literature not focused on in our course:memoir, autobiography, biography, film, literary non-fiction, personal essays, journals and letters, etc.But whatever you choose to write about, the essay should still be an explication/analysis, critical argument paper, much like the papers you have been writing so far in this course.

You might consider your research essay to be a longer version of the kinds of essays your short papers have been, but instead of one or two sources, the research essay should have five sources. Your essay should have a point or points to make about the focus/topic you have chosen, and it should follow the format of an argument (main proposition, claims, evidence and reasoning).And, you should write about a topic/issue that is of interest to you.In other words, do not write a dry, fact-based report-oriented paper.The more interested in your text(s) and/or argument you are as you write, the more interesting a paper your research essay will be–for you to write and me to read.You should begin by thinking about what authors, texts,

issues, concerning literature from our class have interested you; think about what has come up for you in class discussions that has provoked something in you that you felt you wanted to further explore or write about.This is the time, as you brainstorm, to think of questions you want to explore that you put aside as we were moving through our survey of literature. Writing a research essay should be a way to learn, define or discover a literary problem and find a way to solve it.In fact, you can follow your own lead on choice of literary topic, so you may feel that the most difficult part of accomplishing this paper is choosing what to write about. I have some important but minimal expectations to limit the scope and breadth of this paper.

Format & Expectations:

Your research essay should meet the following minimum criteria:

–Your essay must be written as a critical argument paper, not a “report.”

You must have something to claim about an issue, text or author that you

are interested in exploring, and you should use your sources to make

that persuasive argument. Your essay should be based on literature.

–Length should be 5-8 full, typed pages minimum.You may always write more.

–Your essay should use a minimum of 5 sources. (You can include yourself

as a source, since it is a critical essay, and you can use a maximum of two print sources from our textbook.)Sources can be print sources (books, articles, magazines, newspapers, poems, reports, etc.), but do not have to

be–you can use media sources like television, films, ads, interviews,

non-language sources like art, etc.You do not have to cite yourself.

–You should follow MLA citation form for citing sources in your

bibliography.You can find this information in any grammatical handbook,

and I will also be going over it in class soon.You should use in text

citations and a Works Cited page instead of footnotes.

For example–(Atwood, pp. ).

—Your essay will be due at course end at final deadline for papers.

Some options for doing research essays:

1) Choose an author you have been particularly interested in or have been puzzled about and read more of his/her work.If it is a fiction writer, read two to three more pieces of his/her work.If it is a poet, several more poems; if it is a playwright, one more play.Then, get inside the author’s head.Analyze, synthesize, compare–what do you see occurring across these texts:themes, symbols, issues, elements of style, etc.?You can discuss as many literary aspects as you like.Concentrate on giving a sense of what is valuable or not about reading this author’s work for your study of literature.

A word of caution if you choose option #1:as the audience reading this kind of essay, I may not have prior knowledge, so you should consider that part of your job

in writing this paper is to inform me of relevant background or context, on the sources and your essay’s main issue, so that I can understand what you base

your argument on.You will have to educate as well as persuade your audience in this case.

2) Examine autobiographical data on the author and discuss, in detail, the relevance of that information to the literary work(s) you are studying.You might look at

two or three pieces of the author’s work and apply this autobiographical focus to

it.Understand, you should not write a biography or a book report on the author; instead, you are to discuss the relevance of the autobiographical information to a new understanding of the literary text or texts.

3) Find essays, critical pieces, letters, journals, etc., where an author discusses his/her artistic intentions, beliefs, credo, methods, style, etc.Critically connect

or analyze how the author’s own comments about his/her work might help you to see the literary texts in a new light.

4) If an author writes in more than one genre–for example, Poe or Atwood write fiction, poetry and other kinds of texts—examine samples of these various genres by one author and discuss differences or similarities in the forms, themes, style.You might focus this option like #1 above.

5) Choose a theme or issue that haunts you and look at two or three separate authors’ handling of it:for example, texts on gender issues, sexuality, work, marriage, carpe diem, etc.

6) Choose a particular form within a genre–in poetry, for example, the sonnet; in drama, tragedy or comedy; in fiction…. Then examine ways in which two or more authors treat or handle the form.

7) Think about some of the cultural, social, political, spiritual, etc., issues that have arisen in our class about literature.Focus on an issue that intrigues, delights, puzzles, or even offends you, and do some outside reading on it, bringing that information to bear on a literary text’s meaning.Does it inform your reading or interpretation?How so?

Notice how open-ended these options are; it will really be up to you to determine what you want to focus in on.And, if other, more creative options for the paper occur to you, please feel free to explore in those directions.I am here for guidance on that if you need me.In any case, your research essay should be a paper in which you clearly put down what you think about the texts or issues you’ve chosen to write about and why/how you have come to think of it as you have, considering the sources you have garnered to give credence to your argument.

As we discuss the reading texts coming up, we will include generating possible topics for this paper in our discussion.You should use the time in these next couple of weeks, as we read and discuss other texts, to get a focus/issue in mind and to begin

doing research.We will be going to a computer classroom for a session in learning to conduct research for an academic research paper online, and as I said above, I will also be going over MLA citation.