Your assignment is to write a research paper about one work (story, play, poem, essay, novella) from your Norton Anthology of English Masterpieces text this semester (yes, it may be someone whose works we are reading in class, and it may even be one of the actual works we covered).

The works are first come, first serve–no one work can be the basis of more than one student’s research paper.

I recommend choosing either a very short work (and one that you have done a cursory search on in order to make sure there are plenty of sources) or focusing on only one facet of a much longer work, if you choose a piece that is a play or epic poem, for example.

Choose something you really like–something you’d be interested in learning more about!

Project Components

The project will be divided into two, clearly distinct parts:

(1) An Annotated Bibliography of sources about the work and

(2) a Literary Analysis of that work.

Part 1: Annotated Bibliography – 2-3 pages covering 5 sources

What is an annotated bibliography? Basically, it’s a detailed Works Cited page that offers your commentary and evaluation of each source used in your paper. In fact, it’s set up exactly like a Works Cited page, the only difference being that each citation is followed by a brief paragraph called an annotation. In the annotation, you summarize and evaluate the usefulness and content of the source for the purpose of your literary analysis, and you do so in about 100-200 words per annotation. Although you’ll ultimately complete a total of five annotations, one for each source, below is an example of how one annotation looks:

Sample Annotation

Traister, Barbara Howard. “Prospero: Master of Self-Knowledge.” Heavenly Necromancers: The Magician in Renaissance Drama. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1983: 125-149.

In her essay about the central character of Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest, Barbara Howard Traister explores the nature of Prospero’s role as magician. Situating Prospero in a tradition of magicians in English Renaissance drama, Traister suggests that although he shares many characteristics with his dramatic forebears, he ultimately transcends them, as his most impressive feat is not his ability to wield power but rather to restrain it. In developing her argument, Traister suggests that, in his portrayal of Prospero, Shakespeare fulfills the characteristics of the typical Renaissance magician. First, the Renaissance magician must be the victor in a magical contest. Second, a magician must have the ability to command spirits who then employ his magic. That Prospero remains a mere man becomes progressively more significant in the development of Traister’s argument. Third, the Renaissance magician must be the director of various shows and spectacles. Traister’s argument is well taken, for by recognizing his own limitations as a man, Prospero evolves into a more powerful magician of sorts, ultimately able to effect the most considerable change when he relinquishes his wand and cooperates with the natural world, allowing it to take its course. This source proves quite valuable to the central thrust of my literary analysis.

Visit the Purdue Online Writing Lab page on annotated bibliographies for an excellent overview of writing annotated bibliographies, as well as valuable samples.

Part 2: Literary Analysis (2-3 pages)

This portion of the research project will give you the opportunity to synthesize what you have learned from published critics’ interpretation of the work you have selected with your own interpretation of the work. Choose one facet of the work (its theme, use of symbolism, development of a particular character, critical question raised in class, etc.) and provide your own response, being careful to incorporate both the opinions of published critics into your own stance (whether this is to agree or disagree with them). This online PowerPoint presentation on Writing a Literary Analysis will be most useful to you in this process.

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