Getting Started
1.
Read through all of the paper
topics and spend some time planning a response to more than one. In other words,
“try the topic on” to see how it fits. What texts would you focus on? How do
these texts fit the topic? What are some of the complications that might arise
from the use of this text, bearing in mind that complications can often be a
source of the greatest interest for writer and reader?
2.
Once you have selected a topic and
the text or texts that will be your focus, spend some time with those texts.
Reread them with the new perspective of the paper you plan to write. Be careful,
though, not to simply reread them to find evidence to support your position.
Instead be open to the possibility that you might find both confirming and
contradictory evidence. Don’t dismiss the contradictory evidence. Keep track
of it.
3.
Look through your notes on the
topic and the text(s) and develop a preliminary thesis. Refer to the handout
“The English Paper Thesis.”
4.
Write a draft (or drafts) of your
paper. Find someone in class willing to look at your essay (offer to look at his
or her in return). Be careful about relying on friends—you want good feedback
that will help you revise your paper and make it better; you don’t want
friendly comments like “It looks pretty good to me.” You can also visit the
Writing Center at any stage of the process—when you are trying to find a
topic, when you are developing possible responses to the topic, when you are
developing a preliminary thesis, when you are drafting.
5.
If you don’t wait until the last
minute, you can even give me a draft to review. (See deadline above.) I won’t
proofread the paper for you, restricting my comments to larger rhetorical issues
like focus, development, argument and so on.
6.
Be sure to proofread your essays
carefully, and consider giving your paper to a friend or classmate for
proofreading. Also read your paper
out loud to yourself before completing a final draft—make sure it sounds like
spoken English and not like paper-ese. Try
for an easy, graceful, but not overly casual writing style; assume a reader who
knows the text, but has not memorized every detail.
Paper Topics
1.
Write an essay in which you compare
a Wordsworth poem from Lyrical Ballads
(1798 or 1800) to one from Poems, in Two
Volumes. Use your comparison to argue for a change (or no change) in one or
more of the poetic principles Wordsworth articulated in the “Preface” to Lyrical
Ballads.
2.
Write an essay in which you compare
a Wordsworth poem from Lyrical Ballads
(1798 or 1800) to one from Poems, in Two
Volumes. Use your comparison to argue for a change (or no change) in
Wordsworth’s politics or attitude towards a topic important at the time of the
texts’ composition.
3.
Read all of the “Sonnets
Dedicated to Liberty” included in our edition of Wordsworth and write an essay
that explains how this sequence of sonnets can be read as a cohesive, coherent
work through a focus on shared or complementary images, repeated or similar
language, or any other device that links the poems together.
4.
Wordsworth makes the following
observation about the relationship between perception and imagination:
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive;
Use
this observation to examine a Wordsworth poem (other than “Tintern Abbey”).
5.
Research the revision history of
one of Wordsworth’s poems (not “Old Man Travelling”) and write an essay in
which you explain how the revisions can be interpreted as revealing changes in
Wordsworth’s ideas.
6.
As a final alternative, you may
write an essay on a topic of your choice, provided that you submit to me a
proposal for your paper (see below). The proposal is a short (less than one
page) description of your term paper. It provides a preliminary thesis, the
texts you plan to discuss, and any questions or concerns that you have at
present about your project. Please submit your prospectus by email to jgarret@calstatela.edu.
I will respond by email.