English 2208 Paper Assignment

You are asked to write a paper of approximately four pages (double-spaced) on a poet of your choice. As part of your analysis, you should reference at least three poems by that poet. I would also like you to include outside research material as part of your discussion. You need not do extensive research, but you should include at least two outside sources to supplement your analysis. One of these two sources may be biographical material--but only one! Please note: only use biographical information if it helps your thesis!

Be sure to include a title page for your paper that includes your paper title, the course name, your name, my name, and the date. Your final draft should include page numbers, and be double-spaced.

Outside of these requests, I want you to make your own choices about content for this assignment. Here are some suggestions:

• How does knowledge of a poet's life affect our understanding of his or her poetry? Familiarize yourself with biographical information about the poet of your choice from our reading assignments and explain how that information helps you understand -- or does not help you understand -- that poet's writing. (You may find pages 552 - 555 on biographical criticism helpful.) Examples include how Keats saw his own impending death as a source of subject matter in his latter poems, or John Donne or John Milton's lives as Anglican ministers affected their attitudes toward religious subjects.
   
• Pick a poem that you really enjoyed from our readings. Make the focus of your paper an explication of one primary poem, but use a couple of other poems by this poet to help enhance our understanding of this poem by making comparisons and/or contrasts. 
   
• Using a poet and his/her poems, demonstrate and describe a theme that you think might be evident in this poet, at least within the poems you have chosen to discuss. Perhaps use a rather large abstract idea--love, loneliness, belief, death--and show how the poet you have chosen offers an explanation of how we might understand that idea (death in Keats, or belief in Donne, or loss in Tennyson, or loneliness in Frost, or love in Shakespeare, or devotion in Hopkins, etc.).
   
• Consider form, image, rhythm, or diction as it pertains to a particular poet. Illustrate how one or more of those categories is specifically used in a sampling of a poet's work to show us how that poet handles his/her craft. For example, how does Frost use the sonnet? How does Blake use the ballad? How does e.e. cummings push the boundaries of form itself?
  
• Perhaps your poet is most closely associated with a time and place: why is that? For example, Frost is the poet of nature in New England, Poe the gothic poet of the 19th century, Blake the poet of London, Wordsworth the poet of the Lake District in England, and Yeats the poet of Ireland. What poems successfully illustrate that reputation?
   
• Trace the progress of a poet's selections: how your poet moves from perhaps innocence to experience or from youth to age or even from the simple to the complex. (Some good candidates are Keats, W.B. Yeats, Blake, Eliot, and Tennyson.)
   

These are just suggestions. Most topics are likely suitable if you satisfy the paper requirements I've described, have enough to say for about four pages, and clear the topic choice with me. You may also want to consult pages 522 - 524 for additional ideas. Remember: we need 4 - 5 pages, and we need outside sources (with an appropriate Works Cited page included). The final draft will be scored using the criteria linked here.

Remember that any biographical and/or historical information that you may share should only be a small part of your discussion. This is not an assignment where we are looking for one to two pages of biography about the poet's life and death. Only use the biography--if you choose--to help illustrate a particular theme or idea you wish to show us. If you do include biographical material, be sure to document correctly and know that we will need at least one other outside source included in your analysis.

Check out Chapters 22 and 23 in our text for details and examples, as well. (You can use Chapter 24 for documentation help, as well.) Please be sure to document correctly and do not plagiarize. Chapters 23 and 24 are best for getting information about documentation. As with the explication paper, when you submit your paper into D2L, it is also automatically submitted into the turnitin.com website to help verify borrowing.

Here's a simple overview of our schedule:

Introduction to paper ideas: Week of October 26 - 30

Thinking about possible poets and poems: November 1st through November 8th

If any topic needs clearance (or you just want to be sure), do so by Friday, November 13th

Revision and expanding  your draft: week of Nov. 16 - 20

Due: Any time between Monday, Nov. 23rd beginning at 8am to Wednesday, Nov. 25th at midnight.