A “FAKE” PAPER

Read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley(you can find this book online, and it is free http://umich.edu/~umfandsf/other/ebooks/frank10.tx… imagine that the monster is not dead, and the female monster was created. What will happen? Imitating the author Mary Shelley continues to write the story in the way that Walton wrote to her sister’s letter.

You are asked to INVENT A TYPICAL ROMANTIC WORK, using what you’ve learned about Romanticism, and then Write A PAPER ON IT. The work you invent may be a letter(s); you may attribute it to one of the authors we’ve read, to an author that is a hybrid of more than one author we’ve read, or to invent your own author. Obviously, especially in the case of a longer work, you will not be including the text with your paper. As in any other paper, though, I will expect that you’ll give a brief overview, and quote from the text as you go, to illustrate your arguments. If it will be helpful to adapt quotes and phrases from texts we’ve read, go ahead, but try to catch the SPIRIT rather than the LETTER if the originals. If you invent your author, you may want to include brief (invented) biographical data. You probably will find it useful (and amusing) to quote from (invented) literary critics, historians, theorists, etc, who have written about the text. There is a range of tones you may adopt for this exercise, from parody to something so serious that it could pass for a real paper. The more you draw from texts and issues we’ve discussed, the better.

You may want to consider SOME of the following questions, focusing on how the text illustrates Romantic characteristics we’ve discussed. What kind of a story does it tell about personal change and also about historical, social, economic, scientific change? How is its language and imagery coded or charged with political values? How does it spin its representations of class and gender? How does the author’s class/gender identity and politics get played out in the text? How does the text access sublimity? Self-reference? Dynamism? Ecology? How have later interpretations of the text continued its themes and adapted them according to their own historical contexts?

And one more thing: although you are strongly encouraged to cite actual Romantic texts as points of reference and comparison, anyone caught focusing their paper on what turns out to be an ACTUAL Romantic text will be subject to disciplinary action.

SOME RANDOM EXAMPLES:

The recently discovered letters between James Parkinson and Mary Shelley provide a fascinating glimpse into the relations between Romantic science, fiction, and politics…

The 1833 sonnet, “On First Looking Into Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy,” by the radical shoemaker and poet, Erasmus Chartiston, has attracted only dismissive attention from literary scholars. Professor Sneerling’s 1975 article, “Working-Class Romantic Poetry: A Contradiction In Terms? ” is typical. Sneerling argues that working-class poets of the period relied on obsolete 18th-century poetic techniques, and therefore cannot be called “Romantic”…

Last month, a librarian at the British Library rocked the world of literary criticism by announcing the discovery of diaries written by the leech-gatherer whose meeting with William and Dorothy Wordsworth is described in William’s poem,“Resolution and Independence.” In a poem entitled “Resentment and Indifference,” the leech-gatherer provides a very different version of his encounter with the poet and his sister.