Reference no: EM133092698

Survey of American Literature Essay

Textbook: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth Edition, Volume C, 1865-1914

Overview

For this assignment you will write a comparative analysis of three or more poems by different authors and develop a narrowly-defined argumentative thesis on ONE of the prompts. Keep in mind that these are very broad prompts, and it is your job to develop a more narrowly-defined focus from one of these. Further, you will want to build paragraphs around specific points you would like to explore that require a critical synthesis of the works and support a larger thesis related to the prompt. As you develop your analysis, make sure to support your critical assertions with specific evidence from the texts. Avoid unnecessary plot summary; plot summary is not a substitute for critical analysis.

The most important thing about this paper, in addition to having a critical analytical synthesis and an arguable thesis statement for the prompt and literary works you have selected, is to make sure that you ground your analysis in a CLOSE reading of the literary works, including concrete details and explanation to engage the audience. No matter which prompt you choose to explore (and you have free reign to develop any critical analysis you like that is appropriate to the literary works and prompt; there are no "right" or "wrong" interpretations in this course, only stronger and more weakly developed ones), just be sure to connect your main observations and ideas to each other and support them with textual evidence. Move beyond summary and interpretation and into analysis to critically examine your selected literary texts.

Develop a comprehensive and detailed 5 to 10 typed (double-spaced) comparative analysis of three or more poems (see prompts and list below) by different authors that interest you, and that you feel would be interesting to a general audience. Because you will be writing about multiple literary works, you will need to include a Works Cited page (after your 5-10 page composition) to complete your assignment. You should focus on how the literary works respond to your selected prompt, carefully constructing both your thesis statement and analytical comparison (so that your analysis should be very clear and grounded in interesting textual evidence). No additional outside sources are to be used for this paper, which should solely represent your own analytical thinking. When in doubt, contact me for further guidelines about your chosen subject.

Other Considerations

Select a minimum of three different poems written by different authors.

While the individual prompts make suggestions about poets that are appropriate, you may choose to include a different poem from the assigned literary texts if you feel it works better for your paper.

Consider the following questions when developing your comparative analysis:

Objectives: What key idea (based on the prompt) should the audience recognize is present in the texts? Why is this key idea significant to the general reader?
Angle: How do the literary works develop the key idea, i.e. what is your thesis statement? Is the thesis statement clearly defined?
Tone: What attitude about this key idea should be conveyed in your writing? What words will you use to convey this impression?
Evidence: What evidence (concrete, reliable, credible) should be provided to support the thesis statement? How will you synthesize (connect) the literary works in order to support the thesis?
Contribution: How will the comparative analysis show why the literary works are important to the writer and the reader(s)?
Style: How clear is the language/style/expression?

Conclusion: How does your comparative analysis explore representative ideas from the literary works? How does it develop characteristic perspectives or attitudes expressed in the literary works? How do the literary works express individual or communal values? How does your comparative analysis explore aesthetic expression in multiple literary works?

Prompt Options

You will need to choose ONE of the following prompts for this paper:

Choose three twentieth-century poetic works and show how they implicitly and significantly respond to the following quotation from Stevens's "Of Modern Poetry": "The poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice. It has not always had / To find: the scene was set: it repeated what / Was in the script."

Examine twentieth-century modernist lyric poems in traditional forms by poets such as Robinson, Millay, McKay, and Moore. How do these poets reconcile traditional forms with twentieth-century themes? And how is this reconciliation significant?

Many modernist lyric poems are themselves about poetic form and intention. Compare some of these poems and their significance by poets such as Stevens, Williams, and Moore.

The headnote to Marianne Moore states that "Pound worked with the clause, Williams with the line, H.D. with the image, and Stevens and Stein with the word. Moore, unlike these modernist contemporaries, for the most part used the entire stanza as her unit of poetry." Choose poems by a few of these writers that will allow you to further explain the distinctions articulated in this statement and the significance of those distinctions.

Robert Browning was a master of the dramatic monologue - a poem in which a speaker, different from the poet, reveals much about his or her own character in a speech to someone else. Find and discuss dramatic monologues by three twentieth-century American poets. You might look at Stevens, Pound, Eliot, McKay, and Hughes. Consider how they adapt and develop the dramatic monologue as a form, explaining the significance of their work.

Many writers between 1914 and 1945 wrote poetry that may have been influenced by values of modernism, but which reflects other artistic traditions and intentions. Write an essay about poems by Moore, Sterling Brown, and Hughes that show a complex relationship to modernism and reflect on the significance of that relationship.

Comparative Literary Analysis

5 pages

Reference Style: APA

Attachment:- Comparative Literaly Analysis.rar