English 314
Fall 2006
Conrad
Paper #1: Paper
Topics
Instructions:
These are clearly
fairly open questions; my hope is to give you guidance but not to direct your
answers too much. However, you should keep to the questions as stated here. It
is your responsibility to create a sustained, coherent interpretive argument
(i.e., an essay that sets out to present a fresh interpretation based on an
initial thesis with which it is possible to disagree); to anchor your
interpretation in close reading of the text (i.e., based on careful attention
to and interpretation of the details); and make clear the implications of your
reading (i.e., answer the question "so what?"). If you're
engaging with another (critical) writer, make sure that you make clear with
what you're arguing and also that your own interpretation of the work is clear.
You need not use
outside sources. If you
do—including any guides to texts you might find on the
internet—cite them.
I encourage you to
make use of the Writing Center (see syllabus for more details). I am also
available for discussion of papers during office hours and by
appointment. Don't forget to review my guidelines for papers and grading
on the Blackboard website.
And remember:
at least one of your papers this semester needs to be on (one or two) poem (s).
Topics:
1. Does
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" support (or complicate) any of the ideas
presented in Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"?
2. Does Joanna
Baillie's "London" represent the picturesque, as described by Ruskin
(59-62) or Burke (33-39), or Gilpin (40-46)? You should probably pick one
of these theorists of the sublime, the one who provides the most interesting
juxtaposition with the poet. Do you agree with the critic's description?
What is interesting or significant about it? What is important about how Baillie uses the notion of the
"sublime"?
3. Gustave Dore
illustrated "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (see for instance http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/space/Gustave+Dore+Ancient+Mariner+illustrations) What kind of interpretation of the poem do
they provide? You should consider the larger issue of the relationship between
illustration and text in your argument.
4. Compare the
representation of women in Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy" and
either Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes," Coleridge's "Kubla
Khan," or Shelley's "To Jane." What are the implications
of the differences and similarities?
What, for instance, do the poems suggest about the relationship between women
and the imagination? About men and
the imagination? About women and
men? About desire and poetry? etc.
5. Read one of the
essays on Jane Eyre written by students on "Charlotte's Web": http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/ . Find one in which you are interested but with
which you have a disagreement, either major or minor. Write an essay
responding to the essay you choose.
6. What does Thomas
De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1043-1073) suggest about
the power of the imagination? Does
he suggest we have control of it?
Is it a hopeful vision of the imagination? How does he construct it? Why is opium important to our
understanding of the imagination? You might compare De Quincey to another
writer we've studied, such as
Coleridge, Blake, or Shelley; or you could focus on his works alone. You may use the introduction to the
work as a starting point for your argument, especially if you disagree with its
reading.