Do the characters seem to display behaviors that modern psychologist would find interesting? (Psychoanalytic Criticism) Are any of the items in the text symbolic?

Can pick from either one of these short stories Module 9 Poetry Norton, Pages 698- 725 Norton, Pages 761- 769 Norton, Pages 848-862, and 735. Module 10 Poetry Norton, Pages 822- 827, 834- 844 Norton, Pages 848 – 879, 988- 995. Module 11 Drama Norton, Pages 1152- 1187 As we saw with the first paper, this assignment is really a great practice for the upcoming research paper. The assignment asks for a literary analysis that utilizes one of the many schools of literary criticism. The second half of the class includes both poetry and drama. Hamlet, in particular, is one of the richest and most widely criticized works of literature in history. Finding your thesis this time should be much easier than it was for the first paper. What is a “Critical Response Essay?” Critical Response Essays are intended to demonstrate the student’s understanding of the assigned literary works and give the student the opportunity to reflect on his or her academic considerations of that work or author. To do this the student should use one of the schools of literary criticism that are studied in this class as a starting place. This seems complex and daunting at first, but it can be quite simple. To begin, a student should choose one of the readings that have been assigned and combine this with one of the schools of literary criticism we will consider to come up with an argumentative topic and thesis for his or her paper. For instance, a student might find that the play Hamlet is an engaging and interesting reading. At first he or she may not have a clear understanding of why it is interesting or how to use that interest to engage with criticism, but that will come easily enough later. The next question is why is this work interesting to you? The answer to that question will always lead a student to a school of literary criticism. Perhaps a reader feels that the play is interesting because Hamlet seems to be suffering from a mental illness; this would lead to a paper topic about the play as seen through the lens of psychoanalytical literary criticism (a school of criticism that applies modern psychology to literature). Maybe a reader finds the treatment of female characters in the play interesting; this is a paper that would consider the literary school of gender study. Be certain to choose a reading that you find interesting and have given considerable amount of thought to. What should my topic be?

Your topic should be something of your own choosing that reflects our readings. Again, the critical response is your opportunity to consider an aspect of a work you find interesting and compose a paper exploring the aspects of the work that intrigue you by using literary criticism as your guide. In the past good papers have considered the psychological facets of characters, explored symbolism in the work, thought about the role of gender or class in the work, and a great many other topics. The simplest method for determining a topic is something like a math equation. You can answer the question, “what did I read that was interesting? Why was this interesting?” When you have an idea of this answer it will lead you to the topic and school of literary criticism. Again, as an example, let us assume a reader found the play Hamlet most interesting among the course readings. Perhaps he or she found it interesting because Hamlet seems to mentally ill. The topic and thesis might arrive by use of the formula mentioned above (work of interest school of literary criticism = topic). In this case (Hamlet psychoanalytic criticism = a paper that diagnoses Hamlet’s mental illness). Some topics that work well for this course might include: What about the genders of the characters affects your reading? (Gender Study) Do any of the events of the author’s life seem relevant to the work? (Biographic Criticism) Do the characters seem to display behaviors that modern psychologist would find interesting? (Psychoanalytic Criticism) Are any of the items in the text symbolic? (Semiotics) How does class or level of wealth affect what the narrator or characters are acting on? (Marxist Criticism) How do you think this particular reading assignment fits into its period of time? (Historical Literary Criticism) How does the race of the characters or author come into the narrative? (African American Literary Criticism, Ethnic Criticism) In what significant ways can we expect readers to react to this work? (Reader Response) Remember that it all rests on an argument and your argument requires a thesis statement The thesis sentence is, by far, the most important sentence in the paper. The goal of this sentence is to outline for the reader what the argument of the paper will be. It most often is found as the last sentence of the first paragraph and holds such an important place in your paper that you should expect that a poor thesis statement will lead to a poor grade. The thesis statement is a foundation for the argument and should attempt to succinctly and clearly let the reader know what the paper is going to be about. A good rule of thumb when writing either a critical response paper or a research paper is to make sure that every sentence in the paper is in some way continuing to prove the argument first established by the thesis.