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ADVANCED EXPOSITORY WRITING

ENG 201 ON-LINE

Dr. David B. Axelrod

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LITERATURE PAPER

    If you have a favorite writer or work of literature (poem, story, novel, play), you may enjoy writing about the work. This will not be a research paper (sound familiar?!). Rather, I'm asking for your analysis of the author's work. You can do a body or work or focus on a single works of literature. Either way, I want your original perceptions on the work.

 
    Here, you become the literary critic, adding your personal view--your take--of the work which other students may someday consult when they write the "usual" literature paper. When I say, "usual" I speak of something I simply dislike. I feel students are misdirected to believe that writing about literature is either a book report (summarizing the facts and what the work was about) or a pastiche of comments that others have made about the author or his/her work.

    When you read, you react. I assume elements of the reading, word by word, evoke a good or bad response. You are happy or sad, You are angry or mad. You empathize--identifying with the situation and characters--or you are repelled by the characters. Those are all the kinds of reactions that would lead you to some central, unifying thesis on the author &/or the work. That is where your essay on literature would begin.

    Tell me, using actual quotes from the work, why I would or would not want to read the work. Open the work up to me with your perceptions. When I am done with your essay, work I know already may have a new spin. Work I haven't read will either be appealing to me, or perhaps I am warned to stay away from it.

    I will not grade your essay on whether you have a right or wrong interpretation. You can read a version of the essay I use to introduce students to my on-line literature course:

Click here for an: Introduction to Literature

    I will grade you lower if you:

1. don't present an original, focused analysis of the author &/or work.

2. don't use actual quotes from the literature to make your points.

    I will grade you lower if you:

3. needlessly use lots of literary terminology and jargon.