ENGLISH 668
Fall 2003--Prof. K. Conrad
PAPER TOPICS, Paper #2

**Note: YOU ARE WELCOME TO USE OR ADAPT A TOPIC FROM THE FIRST TOPIC SHEET.  Several of the topics on that sheet can be reworked to apply to other texts we've read.

What follows are merely topics; you are responsible for creating an argument and making clear the overall importance of that argument rather than simply answering a question. You are encouraged to come up with your own paper topic as well, although if you do so, please check with me (kconrad@ku.edu) to have your topic approved.  All papers should give evidence of close reading of the text being discussed. If you are doing an alternative assignment, do check with me first.

In any case, DON'T TAKE ON TOO MUCH!  Go for depth and detailed analysis rather than summary and survey.

Due midnight, Friday, 12/12/03.
 

There are many texts to which Ulysses aludes--King Lear, Hamlet, the Bible, the Odyssey, Irish ballads, Plato's Symposium, Yeats poems, operas, etc.  Examine one of the allusions in context; how is Joyce (and/or the character) using the text?  What is the point of the allusion?  What does the allusion suggest about the relationship between Ulysses and the text to which it alludes? 

Does the final chapter of Ulysses provide closure for the text?  How?
 

How does Rhys represent the differences between oral and written language?

What's the significance of the parrot in WSS? To what larger themes does the parrot connect?

What is the relationship the narrator sets up between "amateur" and "professional"? Look the terms up in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or another extensive dictionary.  What is the significance of the terms?  Do they say more about the characters and the story than they seem to on the surface?

Read "The Virtue of Disloyalty" (or another of Greene's essays): does the essay provide a way of reading and understanding his fiction?
 

What does the text suggest about "choosing life"?