EN 12: RESEARCH PAPER OPTIONS
The research paper
requires you to develop your skill in writing a sustained argument on a
literary issue and ensures that you have mastered conventions of academic
research. You may develop a topic of your own or you may use one
of the topics listed below. All topics must be entered into your
research journal and approved on an assigned date.
The topics for research
papers should revolve around a central major theme that arises from your
reading this term. From the research topics listed below, you need
to ask a question that is manageable and appropriate for developing in
a 5 pp. paper. Remember to choose a particular work or writer around
which your discussion will center. Try to ask a significant question
about one of the following possible topics:
Music and society
Gender and literature
Women’s roles in society
African-Americans in fiction and poetry
Becoming an American
Nature and setting in literature
Ethnic identity
Drama and its social or political purpose
For example, one essay topic could examine the role of politics or history in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, 1. Why is politics and war important to his conception of the world? What is the role of a king and his relationship to his people? What are the roles of women in the play? What social or political function do his plays have?
From this research topic, you can begin to read about the life and time of Shakespeare. You can investigate the history and major events of his life, or you can investigate social pressures on people’s lives. Biographies and narrative histories are useful for this information. Criticism of the play will also illuminate the individual roles of characters or the language of the period. Here are examples of sources you might turn to for information:
Biographies
Narrative histories
Case books (collections of articles, chronologies, and contemporary
reviews of literary works)
Articles
Interviews (especially for contemporary authors)
Videos (films providing information or interpretations of plays)
Literary criticism
I have listed below more examples of Research Paper Options. You may choose your own, but need to have your topic approved. Remember to discuss in detail one of the works we have read in class.
Option #1: Gender Issues
Adolescence tends
to be the time when people confront basic issues about how they define
themselves and their identities. As part of a required eleventh grade
English class, Mr. Holcombe wishes to teach writers to whom his students
can relate. He also needs to make sure the stories he teaches are
technically superb and intellectually challenging. Finally, he would
like to raise issues that many of his students are confronting in their
own lives.
Choosing one or more of
the stories we read, write a paper persuading Mr. Holcombe and others in
his department which author would be best to teach his students.
Several of the stories we have read discuss issues about how men and women
relate to larger social pressures concerning gender. You might consider
Faulkner, Hawthorne, Chopin, and Cather as examples. In the course
of your defense, try to explain how these authors are technically excellent
and why they are still relevant today, despite their having been written
in other eras.
Option #2: Women in Society
Women confront many
issues in their everyday lives as a result of the social roles they assume—as
mothers, wives, caretakers, and moral exemplars. Why do women in
literature so often commit suicide? Even if they don’t, how do they
live out their lives in diminished ways? What particular conflicts
do you see arising in fiction or drama that explain why female characters
live tragic or severely compromised lives? Considering the female
characters we have studied, explore the reasons behind the tragic choices
they make. You might extend this discussion to the larger issues
women face in society. Among the stories and plays we have read,
Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,”
Chopin’s The Awakening, and Sophocles’s Oedipus the King and Antigone would
be good choices.
Option #3: Naturalism
Chopin’s The Awakening
might be described as “a naturalistic tragedy.” Naturalism has been
defined as a literary movement that depicts characters who are motivated
by physical or biological needs for hunger, money, or sex. These
literary works tend to uncover and examine almost clinically the mechanistic
behaviors of their characters. Explore the topic of naturalism and
explain how or why one or several of the works we have studied are considered
naturalist texts.
Option #4: Whitman and Ginsberg
Among the poets we
have examined, Walt Whitman and Allan Ginsberg are among the most closely
related, thematically and formally. Their politics, literary styles,
social lives, and philosophies are parallel in many ways. At the
same time, their visions of America differ and suggest how important their
eras were to shaping the issues of their art. Explore the similarities
and dissimilarities between these two fascinating poets.
Option #5: A Sense of Place
Many writers evoke
a strong sense of place in their literary works. Sometimes these
authors have been referred to as “regionalist” or “local color” writers,
since they evoke a particular locale, as does Kate Chopin of Creole life
in her fiction. Consider this treatment of place in one or more of
the writers we have read. For instance, you might look at how writers
such as Hawthorne and Frost use their New England heritage and settings.
Alternatively, you might look at portrayals of the South in Faulkner and
Chopin.
How do the writers
evoke their landscapes in their literary works? What relationship
is there between the setting and the characters or the dilemmas that the
characters face?
Option #6: The Idea of Fate
The Greeks thought
that everyone’s life was predestined, and each person must stoically accept
his lot in life. At the end of Oedipus the King, the chorus contends,
“You shall call no man happy, till he has passed life’s borders, free from
pain.” Explore the idea of fate in Sophocles’s plays and how the
lives of the characters reflect their struggles with and working out of
their fates. Given our desire today in America to strive for success
and self-advancement, do you find the classical idea of fate inadequate
or still relevant?
Option #7: Gender in Antigone
Is Creon a politician
concerned with imposing and maintaining order? Is Antigone an anarchist
whose action will destroy that order? Or is she a private citizen
determined to follow the dictates of her personal beliefs? Write
an essay following the lines of the question on p. 644 in Literature and
the Writing Process. You should address the struggle between public
policy and private conscience, and explain which character you believe
takes a moral stand and why.
Another option would
be to discuss gender in Antigone. How important is gender in the
struggle between Antigone and Creon? Analyze the play along the liens
of male-female conflict. You might consider Ismene, Haemon, and Eurydice
in examining the opposing values of the play.
Option #8: Topic of Your Choice
Puruse some question
of interest to you that emerges from our reading in the course.